Blackhat

Michael Mann's cybercrime thriller is a shallow exercise in Hollywood action tropes, designed to pander to the growing Asian market and visually ugly to boot. Blackhat begins with a devastating explosion at a nuclear plant in China, which Captain Chen (Leehom Wang) is assigned to investigate, along with his sister Lien (Tang Wei). The siblings quickly learn that a similar attack on a U.S. reactor was aborted, which leads them to seek American cooperation in identifying the source. Soon the two are collaborating with not only a defense department honcho (Viola Davis) but also Chen's old MIT roommate, roguish Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), whom they spring from prison in return for his help. Before long the team is busy globetrotting in pursuit of the elusive villain, from Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta, and finally to Malaysia. Blackhat features a labyrinthine plot marked by plenty of chases and shoot-outs, but it grows sillier with each twist. A cybercrime tale can certainly be made compelling, but Mann's mixture of glitzy computer screen imagery and badly staged spy-movie action sequences doesn't do the job. Not recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “Creating Reality” behind-the-scenes featurette (17 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are “The Cyber Threat” (13 min.) featurette on real-world hacking, “On Location Around the World” (10 min.) location featurette, and bonus DVD, digital, and UltraViolet copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for an unsatisfying thriller.] (F. Swietek)