Blackhat

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Michael Mann/Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Leehom Wang and Wei Tang

Michael Mann's new tekkie-thriller, Blackhat has the good sense not to encumber or weigh itself down with cyber-jargon and cripple narrative momentum with sustained shots of characters sitting before computer screens. Though the film has its share of both, it also features copious gun-play to liven the proceedings and a serpentine plot that ultimately veers into James Bond territory.

Though the story's anti-hero, Nick Hathaway is a muscle bound, former cyber-criminal (Chris Hemsworth, ludicrously cast as a computer-hacking genius), he also manages to be capable of handling himself in scuffles with the baddies (I guess time served behind bars makes this reasonably plausible). Chris Hemsworth isn't the most obvious choice to play a brilliant computer-hacker but given the number of violent confrontations Nick finds himself in, casting Thor seems logical. Though someone like Jesse Eisenberg might a better fit to play a computer brainiac, he would also look fairly ridiculous clobbering a room full of Korean toughs in a restaurant.

After a hacker causes a disaster at a Chinese nuclear plant, where a silo is destroyed and the facility dangerously irradiated, a young, intelligent, M.I.T.-educated Chinese police officer, Dawai (Leehom Wang) is assigned the case. Aware of the tensions between his government and the U.S., he nevertheless enlists the help of the Justice Department and one of its top operatives, Carol Barrett (a tough, well-cast Viola Davis) to apprehend the hacker. Dawai is aware that the only way to catch the hacker might necessitate employing one. He calls upon his former associate Nick Hathaway, who is serving time in a Pennsylvanian prison for his own hacking crimes. Barrett and the government are reluctant to give a dangerous hacker access to computers and sensitive data but seeing they have little choice, they agree to his outrageous demand for commuting his sentence if the mission is successful. Joining the hunt is Dawai's beautiful, young sister Lien (Wei Tankg), whose presence provides romantic possibilities for Nick.

As the hunt progresses, the group finds itself at the sight of the nuclear disaster, where they must recover the facility's back-up files to further trace their target, which involves donning radiation suits and dealing with the plant's dangerously hot, contaminated interior.

In time, Nick and the group discover one of the perpetrator's associates is a Lebanese thug who learns the task force is on his trail, which leads to a cat and mouse duel where the hunters become the hunted.

Throughout their mission, the mysterious hacker's motives remain obscure but as the manhunt leads to Jakarta, Nick and Lien discover his agenda, which involves controlling the supply of a certain resource and manipulating its market price for financial gain. His grandiose plan wouldn't be out of place in any James Bond thriller although the villain's diabolical demeanor is hardly that of a Dr. No or Goldfinger (which, for this movie, is a good thing).

Blackhat, which refers to a computer program Nick and Dawai devised in the past, is being utilized by the hacker to gain access to supposedly secure data.

Mann's film is fairly fast-paced. He is a pro when it comes to balancing expository information with pulse-quickening action. Nick's getting-into-the-mind-of-the-killer approach reminded me of another Mann film; Manhunter, where the protagonist must think like a serial killer to apprehend one. It isn't a new plot trick but it serves its purpose here well enough.

Though the producers must have felt the film needed an unnecessary romantic angle, Hemsworth and Tang make a charming, offbeat pair. The Aryan with granite-brawn and the Asian beauty with dark eyes are at least a visual departure from the Hollywood norm.

I liked the beginning, where we see computer data pass through tiny circuits and hardware as streams of light. Almost occurring at the molecular level, the imagery gives us some sense of system interconnectedness and how such a phenomenon is capable of being exploited by those with nefarious designs. More importantly, it shows us how destruction can be achieved with a mere signal passing between computers.

Blackhat is enjoyable enough, with its serpentine plot and comely cast. It seems to be adequate entertainment for January, which is the annual launch of Hollywood's Cinema Winter/Spring collection, or as it might otherwise be known, The Season of Swill. With last year's Oscar contenders slowing to a trickle in theaters, the arrival of Mann's film seems like a kitten entering a lion's den.

His latest makes for passable afternoon multiplex fare but beyond that, one might expecting too much. I'm still waiting for Mann to manage something brilliant; something more than just fly-by-night thrillers. I guess I still have to bide my time.