Michael Mann’s films almost grunt with machismo; even when nothing much is going on, they flex and strain and vibrate, like a weightlifter who’s hoisted the bar up to chest level, in preparation for getting it over his head. The spectacle here is sometimes absorbing but more often ridiculous, and it isn’t his best work. Blackhat is an action thriller, with Mann’s traditional heavy-artillery shoot-outs, on a notionally contemporary theme: computer hacking. It’s a difficult subject to dramatise, and actually, Blackhat often looks like an old-fashioned McGuffin thriller, in which our fugitive hero and heroine are allowed to run, hand in hand, down the escalator into a subway.
Chris Hemsworth plays convicted hacker Nick Hathaway, who is seen in his cell reading Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. Nick is sprung from prison by FBI agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) working alongside Chinese agent Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom), who need this freethinking, badass genius to help catch a “blackhat” cybercriminal who has destroyed a Hong Kong nuclear reactor. Nick joins their quest, and finds himself falling for Dawai’s beautiful sister Chen, played by Wei Tang (from Ang Lee’s 2007 film Lust, Caution). Most of the Mann ingredients are in place: an exchange of fire escalates to a quasi-military engagement. Characters whizz from place to place in helicopters and private aircraft. When someone has their hands up and a gun at the back of their head, well, that is when they’re at their most dangerous. Disappointingly, the one Mann signature scene missing is the sweaty dialogue face-off between two males, but no one is really in Nick’s alpha league.
