Blackhat (film)

Blackhat
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Michael Mann
Written by	Morgan Davis Foehl Michael Mann
Produced by	Thomas Tull Michael Mann Jon Jashni
Starring	Chris Hemsworth Tang Wei Viola Davis Holt McCallany Wang Leehom
Cinematography	Stuart Dryburgh
Edited by	Joe Walker Stephen Rivkin Jeremiah O'Driscoll Mako Kamitsuna
Music by	Harry Gregson-Williams Atticus Ross Leo Ross
Production companies	Legendary Pictures Forward Pass
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	January 16, 2015 (2015-01-16)
Running time	133 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$70 million
Box office	$11.8 million

Blackhat is a 2015 American action thriller mystery film co-produced and directed by Michael Mann and written by Morgan Davis Foehl. The film stars Chris Hemsworth, Tang Wei, Viola Davis, Holt McCallany, and Wang Leehom. The film premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on January 8, 2015, and was released in theaters on January 16.

Plot

At a nuclear plant in Chai Wan, Hong Kong, a hacker causes the coolant pumps to overheat and explode. Not long after in Chicago, the Mercantile Trade Exchange gets hacked, making numbers go way up. The Chinese government and the FBI determine that the hack was caused by a Remote Access Tool (RAT). A military officer in China's cyber warfare unit, Captain Chen Dawai, is tasked to find the people responsible for the attacks. Dawai enlists the aid of his sister Lien. He meets with Agent Carol Barrett of the FBI in Los Angeles and reveals the code in the RAT was written by himself and Nicholas Hathaway, his roommate in college. Hathaway is serving a prison sentence for computer crimes and Dawai asks that the FBI arrange for his release to help them. Hathaway is offered temporary release in exchange for his services, but he tells the warden that he will only provide help if his sentence is commuted. The agreement is made, but if Hathaway fails, he will be sent back to prison immediately. Barrett's partner Jessup is also assigned to keep an eye on Hathaway.

While looking into the hack at the trade exchange, the team discovers that an employee from the computer systems department who recently resigned, James Lozano, was in reality an ex-convict whose real name is Alonzo Reyes. Hathaway and Lien go to Reyes's apartment, where he is found dead in his room from what appears to be a drug overdose. Hathaway looks at Reyes's computer and sees an email arranging for a meeting that night. Hathaway replies affirmative to the email for the meeting to happen.

That night, Hathaway and Lien go to the meeting location, a Korean restaurant. While they wait, Lien asks Hathaway what he went to prison for. He says that he first spent a little more than a year in prison for a bar fight, but his hacking landed him back in there for 13 years. Hathaway doesn't think much of himself, but Lien believes he is a smart man with a lot of worth. They continue to wait for their suspect until Hathaway goes into the back of the restaurant and finds a security camera terminal. The camera is directed at where Hathaway and Lien were sitting and appears to be streaming its feed to another location. Hathaway manages to send a threat to the camera's operator via the terminal. Back in the restaurant, three Korean men enter and aggressively approach Hathaway. He promptly beats them all senseless.

The team returns to Hong Kong and work with Hong Kong police's Inspector Alex Trang. They learn the identities of three men in Hong Kong who received large sums of money, from the trade exchange hack, into their accounts. They are presumably connected to a known paramilitary named Kassar. While several Hong Kong police officers stake out Kassar's hideout in Shek O, the money from the 3 bank accounts, amounting to some US$74 million, were transferred out. In the meantime, Lien and Hathaway have become romantically involved and Dawai finds them in bed together. While Dawai does not object to the relationship, as his sister does seem happier than she has been in a while, he is worried about what might happen if Hathaway gets sent back to jail. Dawai and his team lose contact with the stake out team in Shek O and the Hong Kong police's SDU is activated to assault Kassar's hideout. They find the stake out team murdered and get into a firefight with Kassar and his men, resulting in the deaths of several police officers and Trang getting severely shot, while the terrorists gets away.

The team then learns that the situation at the nuclear plant has been stabilized and that it is now possible to enter the ruins to retrieve a data drive that may have information on the identity of the hacker. While the drive retrieval was a success, the data extracted was incomplete due to physical damage. Agent Barrett tries to get the NSA to allow them to use a data reconstruction system called Black Widow but is turned down due to the presence of Dawai, a member of a foreign military as well as Hathaway, a convicted hacker. Regardless, Hathaway manages to hack his way into NSA and through Black Widow, learns that the hacker's server is based in Jakarta. While it is technically impossible to remotely hack the server due to heavy electronic protection, it is possible to get the data by breaking into the server physically. In the meantime, Lien finds out the hacker has been buying satellite photos of a remote site in Perak, Malaysia.

Hathaway's hack into the NSA does not go unnoticed and the US government demands his apprehension and return to prison. Dawai's superiors agree as they do not want to antagonize the US while Barrett and Jessup receive orders to detain Hathaway. Dawai, Lien and Hathaway manage to elude their pursuers and make plans to leave Hong Kong and continue their investigation when they are attacked by Kassar and his men, who have been following them. Dawai is killed immediately. Shortly after, Barrett and Jessup, who have been tracking Hathaway from a beacon he is forced to wear on his ankle, arrive at the scene of the attack and get into a fight with Kassar. While both Barrett and Jessup are killed, they buy enough time for Lien and Hathaway to escape into the subway.

Hathaway and Lien travel to the location of the satellite photos in Malaysia to try and figure out the hacker's goal. Hathaway realizes that the hacker's attack at the nuclear plant was merely a rehearsal for a bigger plan to destroy several major tin mines in Malaysia, allowing the hacker to make a killing on the tin trading market. The two then travel to Jakarta and manage to physically gain access to the hacker's server. They manage to steal the hacker's money from Hong Kong and force the hacker to contact them. The hacker and Hathaway agree to meet to negotiate the return of the money.

Hathaway insists the hacker and Kassar come alone but they bring their gang along. The meeting place is a crowded parade and Hathaway trails the hacker and Kassar from behind. Kassar pulls a gun on Hathaway but Hathaway manages to stab him with a hidden screwdriver. Two of the hacker's men catch up and fire at Hathaway, hitting him a few times but Hathaway, using Kassar's gun, manages to kill them. Hathaway finally catches up with the hacker and manages to kill him despite getting stabbed. He hobbles back to the car where Lien is waiting with medical supplies and gets patched up. The film ends with Lien and Hathaway leaving Indonesia, with the hacker's money still in their bank account.

Cast

• Chris Hemsworth as Nick Hathaway
• Tang Wei as Chen Lien
• Viola Davis as FBI Agent Carol Barrett
• Ritchie Coster as Kassar
• Holt McCallany as FBI Agent Jessup
• Yorick van Wageningen as 'The Boss'
• Leehom Wang as Chen Dawai
• Andy On as Hong Kong Police Inspector Alex Trang
• Manny Montana as Lozano
• William Mapother as Rich Donahue
• Archie Kao as Shum
• Shi Liang as Lieutenant Colonel Zhao
• Cheung Siu Fai as Chow
• Adrian Pang as Keith Yan
• Jason Butler Harner as Frank
• John Ortiz as Henry Pollack
• Alexander von Roon as News Anchor

Production

Chris Hemsworth (left) and Michael Mann (right) at the 2014 San Diego Comic Con, promoting the film.

In an interview done at the LMU Film school, Michael Mann said he was inspired to make Blackhat after reading about the events surrounding Stuxnet, which was a computer worm that targeted and reportedly ruined almost one fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Several technical advisors and consultants were used during the production, like former hacker Kevin Poulsen (senior editor for Wired News), to make the film as authentic as possible. Director Mann also met with Mike Rogers, who was Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence until 2015. Parisa Tabriz, who manages Google's information security engineering team, said that "It's the most accurate information security film I've seen."

The film was tentatively titled Cyber, however the final title was revealed on July 26, 2014 during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con International, and it was being estimated that it might qualify for the Oscars. The first official trailer for the film was released on September 25, 2014.

Filming began on May 17, 2013, in Los Angeles, California; Hong Kong; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

Director Mann donated HK$300,000 (US$38,500) to The Community Chest of Hong Kong in the name of Hang Seng Bank, to thank the bank for allowing him to film Blackhat for five evenings in the bank's lobby area.

In November 2013, Universal set the North American release date for January 16, 2015. Shortly after the official premiere of the movie, composer Harry Gregson-Williams stated that although he is credited for the score the final film "contains almost none of my compositions". He would later delete the status update containing this information.

Soundtrack

Music for the film was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams and Atticus Ross. Upon viewing the film, however, Gregson-Williams posted a message on Facebook stating that his score went almost unused in the final edit, which included synthesized music not prepared by him or Ross. He went on to say that, "I therefore reluctantly join the long list of composers who have had their scores either sliced and diced mercilessly or ignored completely by Michael Mann."

Release

Blackhat was a box office bomb, opening at #10 and earning only $1.7 million on its opening day. It made just $4.4 for the weekend against its $70 million budget. This made the movie one of the worst debuts ever for a movie playing in over 2,500 locations.

Internationally, the film played below expectations in all major markets including Denmark, Greece, Poland, Taiwan, Turkey and Vietnam. This drew ire, especially in Taiwan, as the casting of Lee Hom Wang and Tang Wei was directed towards the Chinese speaking market.

Reception

Blackhat has received mixed to negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a rating of 31%, based on 115 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Thematically timely but dramatically inert, Blackhat strands Chris Hemsworth in a muddled misfire from director Michael Mann." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 49 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". In a screening for security specialists, the film received positive responses.

External links

• Blackhat at IMDb
• Blackhat at Box Office Mojo
• Blackhat at Rotten Tomatoes
• Blackhat at Metacritic