Blackhat (2015)

A furloughed convict and his American and Chinese partners hunt a high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta.

Director:

Michael Mann

Writer:

Morgan Davis Foehl

Stars:

Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Wei Tang

1 win & 5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Chris Hemsworth	...	Nick Hathaway
Leehom Wang	...	Chen Dawai
Wei Tang	...	Chen Lien
Viola Davis	...	Carol Barrett
Holt McCallany	...	Mark Jessup
Andy On	...	Alex Trang
Ritchie Coster	...	Elias Kassar
Christian Borle	...	Jeff Robichaud
John Ortiz	...	Henry Pollack
Yorick van Wageningen	...	Sadak
Tyson Chak	...	Tech
Brandon Molale	...	Sort Guard
Danny Burstein	...	Associate Warden Jeffries
Archie Kao	...	Shum
Abhi Sinha	...	Daniels

Storyline

Nick Hathaway, an extremely talented hacker who has gone astray, finds his way out of a 15 year prison sentence when parts of a computer code he once wrote during his youth appears in a malware that triggered a terrorist attack in a nuclear power plant in China. This opportunity will reunite him with an old friend but will also put him in the middle of a power game between the American and Chinese government as well as an arch villain hacker whose identity he has to find if he wants to keep his freedom and his life.

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Plot Keywords:

hacker | chinese | computer | cybercrime | one word title | 

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Taglines:

We are no longer in control

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Genres:

Action | Crime | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for violence and some language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English Mandarin Spanish

Release Date:

16 January 2015 (USA)

Also Known As:

Cyber

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong, China

Box Office

Budget:

$70,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$4,415,000, 18 January 2015, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$8,005,980, 31 December 2015

Company Credits

Production Co:

Forward Pass, Legendary Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

133 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital Datasat SDDS Dolby Surround 7.1 Dolby Atmos

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Wei Tang and Leehom Wang's first Hollywood film. They had previously starred together in Lust, Caution (2007) eight years earlier.

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Goofs

When talking about cracking a GPG key, Chen mentions a minimum of 512bits, but in reality GNUpg would most likely only support 1024bits for either RSA, DSA, or Elgamal key-pair.

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Quotes

George Reinker: The U.S. Government would like your technical advice on this. In exchange for that, we're going to furlough you right out of here. You sign that on the last page, and we'll get you processed.
Nicholas Hathaway: [begins skimming the agreement]
George Reinker: You'll wear an ankle bracelet and be accompanied by a U.S. Marshall. Your computer access will be restricted. If you wanna study the whole document, you can go right ahead. I can come back in a month or two.
Nicholas Hathaway: No, I'm done.
[pushing the folder back]
George Reinker: You didn't sign it.
Nicholas Hathaway: Yeah, why...
[...]

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Alternate Versions

Michael Mann premiered the director's cut of the film during a retrospective of his films at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 10, 2016. This version is three minutes longer than the theatrical release, and opens with the hacking attack on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, rather than the Hong Kong nuclear plant attack (which has been moved to the middle of the film). Some scenes and dialogue exchanges have also been cut or shortened. This cut was shown on FX on May 9, 2017; several days later it was made available on DirecTV Now, Hulu with Live TV and other streaming services.

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Connections

Featured in Film '72: Episode #44.6 (2015)

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Soundtracks

Things to Come
from Elysium (2013)
Written and Produced by Ryan Amon
Courtesy of TriStar Pictures, Inc. and MRC II Distribution Company L.P.
Under License from Sony Pictures Music Group

User Reviews

Hacking - Lucrative Trade

This is one of the few, say past fifteen years, films with science and or high tech as an important plot element, whether sci-fi or just drama, that did its research and got the science/tech mostly right. And, it did so in a way that explained it with some entertaining clarity e.g. the opening, and a couple of other scenes, showing packets of data traveling through computer architecture was about as good as it can be. The rest of the film that dealt with cyber hacking was presented with accuracy and surprising clarity for a mass marketing film. Great location authenticity with filming in L.A. (OK, that's not so great), Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong.

On the other hand the action scenes were basically just movie entertainment and at times a bit overboard. Such as, and a bit far-fetched, that our lead character (Hemsworth) is a world class coder (programmer) and some how had the time to become a world class action killing machine. Talk about being a Renaissance man! More of an international cast would have been interesting. Davis (with Tina Turner wig which made no sense for an agent) was stereotyped into filling the black FBI agent role which seems to be a popular character placement in film in recent years (e.g., recently, "Powers").