Blackhat (15)

Directed by Michael Mann
Written by Morgan Davis Foehl
On general release from 20th February 2015

Reviewed by Antonio Rubio

Shirtless North American renegade male star is needed to save western world from evil cyber-attack. Blackhat ‘s general plot seems at first sight good enough to entertain you for a while. It has all the elements to develop a decent blockbuster thriller about a stereotypical sexist Caucasian hero whose duty is to save up-to-date world’s menace through his extraordinary skills with computers while stabbing some eastern European bad guys.

You can observe as well Mann’s ability with the hand-held camera when filming action scenes using real ammo. He is also able to shoot some beautiful scenes thanks to his witty use of light and depth of field that highlights some really well chosen exotic scenarios.

Unfortunately, this is not enough to make a decent blockbuster, mainly because it lasts for 2 hours and 10 minutes and some of the main elements don’t work as expected. The characters are clumsily developed because of poor narrative and boring dialogues interrupt the pace of the story and lengthen the film unnecessarily.

Sometimes cast performances can compensate for these deficiencies, but this is not the case here. Nick Hattaway (Chris Hemsworth) is as plain and dull as most of the rest of the characters as well as the relationships among them. The love story between him and Chen Lien (Wei Tang) is too forced and half-developed, which leads to the correspondent ludicrous love scene. Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) is a decent character, but he doesn’t have enough relevance to the plot. It would be unfair to say the same of Inspector Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) whose performance is quite respectable.

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