Blackhat (2/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 125 minutes.

OK for children.

This is the new kind of thriller. It’s one that makes absolutely no sense, full of guns that fire unending rounds of ammunition, gunfights in crowded areas, chases that spring out of nowhere, well I could go on and on and on. There is at least one plot hole every minute.

Directed by Michael Mann from a script by Morgan Davis Foehl, this stars heartthrob Chris Hemsworth, supported by Viola Davis and Wei Tang as the love interest.

It’s difficult to write a review of a movie like this because the plot is so preposterous. Chris is a computer expert who is sprung from jail with the condition that he’ll get his freedom if he tracks down a hacker who has caused a catastrophic meltdown at a Chinese nuclear power plant. That’s about the last thing one understands as this movie progresses.

But even worse than the plot are the plot holes and situations that simply boggle the mind. Just as an example, and I could write a 10,000 word treatise on all of the absurdities of this movie, Chris and Tang are running away from just about everybody with just the clothes on their back and no money. Got it? They did have tickets on a private plane to Indonesia. So they hop on the plane. One scene they are on the plane. The next scene they are on a barren landscape in Indonesia. They walk around and talk for a little while. Then the next scene they’re in a hotel room somewhere. Then, we see them driving a car. Oh, I forgot to mention, they have completely changed their clothes. Then Tang is going to meet somebody and she is dressed fit to kill in a fancy white outfit with high heels and perfect makeup. It goes on from there, so there is no need to detail the constant nonsense this film foists on its audience. There’s no explanation how they segued from being on the run with nothing but the clothes on their backs to how they got to the barren landscape, or how they got from the barren landscape to the hotel room in some city, or how they got their changes of clothes, etc., etc., etc. Apparently “Beam me up, Scotty” is alive and well in the world of Mann & Foehl because normal physics can’t explain the miracles that Chris and Tang accomplish here.

There are other absurdities. Without going into all of them, one is a gun fight in which the bad guys have automatic AK47s (and their unending rounds of bullets). The good guys have what look like 45 caliber semi-automatic hand guns. The bad guys spray bullets all over everything, rarely hitting anything, but the good guys aim their pistols carefully and shoot most of the bad guys dead, even though they are more than 100 feet apart, virtually impossible shots for a hand gun, especially a 45 caliber hand gun which is notoriously inaccurate.

But I guess this movie might appeal to somebody because I saw it at a screening at the Directors Guild in Los Angeles and when the credits came on there was actually a smattering of applause. But the guy sitting next to me said as we were quickly leaving the theater, “Next time, I pick the picture.”