Blackhat
Blackhat is a 2015 American action thriller mystery film co-written, co-produced and directed
by Michael Mann. The film stars Chris Hemsworth, Tang Wei, Viola Davis, Holt
McCallany, and Wang Leehom. The film premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre in
Los Angeles on January 8, 2015, and was released in theaters on January 16.
Blackhat was a box office bomb, earning only $19.6 million at the box office
against a budget of $70 million. While the film received generally
mixed-to-negative reviews, with criticisms focused on casting and a plodding
pace, some critics found brilliance in the film, enough to place the film in
some critics' year-end lists.
Directed by Michael
Mann
Produced by Thomas
Tull,Michael Mann,Jon Jashni
Written by Morgan
Davis Foehl,Michael Mann
Starring Chris
Hemsworth,Tang Wei,Viola Davis,Holt McCallany,Wang Leehom
Music by Harry Gregson-Williams,Atticus Ross
Cinematography Stuart Dryburgh
Edited by Joe Walker,Stephen E. Rivkin,Jeremiah O'Driscoll,Mako Kamitsuna
Production company Legendary Pictures,Forward Pass
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release dates January 8, 2015 (Los Angeles premiere)
January 16, 2015
Running time 133 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $70 million
Box office $19.6 million
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Story of Blackhat Movie
At a nuclear
plant in Chai Wan, Hong Kong, a hacker causes the coolant pumps to overheat and
explode. Not long after in Chicago, the Mercantile Trade Exchange gets hacked,
causing soy futures to rise. The Chinese government and the FBI determine that
the hack was caused by a Remote Access Tool (RAT). A military officer in China's
cyber warfare unit, Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang), is tasked to find the
people responsible for the attacks, and enlists the aid of his sister Chen Lien
(Tang Wei), a networking engineer. He meets with FBI Agent Carol Barrett (Viola
Davis) in Los Angeles and reveals the code in the RAT was written by himself
and Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), his college roommate, in their school
days, years before Hathaway was sent to prison for an unrelated hack. Dawai
asks that the FBI arrange for Hathaway to be released from prison, where he is
serving a sentence for computer crimes. Hathaway is offered temporary release
in exchange for his services.
A dead
colleague's computer yields a clue to a connection, so Hathaway and Lien go to
the rendezvous but it is a trap set by the hacker to alert him to pursuit.
Hathaway fights three men.
In Hong Kong,
the team traces the stock trade money to a known paramilitary named Kassar. A
stakeout team is murdered while Hathaway, Jessup, Chen, Trang along with a
Special Duties Unit team raid Kassar's hideout but once again it is a trap. A
shootout ensues and Trang as well as a number of SDU officers are killed.
Kassar and his men escape.
The nuclear
plant has stabilized enough to retrieve a data drive from the control room but
it is corrupted. Agent Barrett turns a blind eye while Hathaway hacks into the
NSA to use a classified data tool called Black Widow to reconstruct the
corrupted data. He learns that the hacker's server is based in Jakarta. Lien
finds out the hacker has been buying satellite photos of a site near Seri
Manjung, Malaysia.
Hathaway's
hack into the NSA does not go unnoticed and the US government demands his
return to prison. Dawai's superiors agree as they do not want to antagonize the
US, while Barrett and her partner Agent Jessup receive orders to detain
Hathaway. Dawai, Lien and Hathaway manage to elude their pursuers and make
plans to leave Hong Kong and continue their investigation when they are
attacked by Kassar and his men, who have been following them. Dawai is killed;
shortly after, Barrett and Jessup, who have been tracking Hathaway using an
ankle bracelet, arrive at the scene. While both Barrett and Jessup are killed
in a firefight, they buy enough time for Lien and Hathaway to escape into the
subway.
Hathaway and
Lien travel to the location of the satellite photos in Malaysia to try and
figure out the hacker's goal. Hathaway realizes that the hacker's attack at the
nuclear plant was merely a test for a later plan to destroy several major tin
mines in Malaysia, allowing the hacker to make a fortune trading tin futures,
financed using the funds from the Mercantile Exchange hack. The two then travel
to Jakarta and using a distraction manage to physically gain access to the
hacker's server. They manage to transfer the hacker's money from his Hong Kong
bank and force the hacker to contact them. The hacker and Hathaway agree to
meet to negotiate the return of the money, supposedly in exchange for
Hathaway's involvement in the larger scheme.
Hathaway
insists the hacker and Kassar come alone but they bring their gang along. The
meeting place is a crowded parade and Hathaway trails the hacker and Kassar
from behind. Kassar pulls a gun on Hathaway but Hathaway is prepared and
manages to stab him with a hidden screwdriver. Two of the hacker's men catch up
and wound Hathaway, who manages to kill them. Hathaway finally faces off with
the hacker and manages to kill him despite getting stabbed. He escapes the
chaos of the parade with Lien's help, and then gets patched up. The film ends
with Lien and Hathaway leaving Indonesia, with the hacker's money still in
their bank account.
Cast by
Chris Hemsworth as Nicholas Hathaway, a convicted computer hacker
Leehom Wang as Captain Chen Dawai
Viola Davis as FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett
Ritchie Coster as Kassar
Holt McCallany as Deputy United States Marshal Jessup
Yorick van
Wageningen as Sadak, 'The
Blackhat'
Tang Wei as Chen Lien, Chen's sister
Andy On as Hong Kong Police Inspector Alex Trang
Manny Montana as
Lozano
William Mapother as Rich Donahue, a National Security Agency operative
Archie Kao as Shum
Shi Liang as Lieutenant Colonel Zhao
Cheung Siu Fai as Chow
Adrian Pang as Keith Yan
Jason Butler Harner as Frank
John Ortiz as Henry Pollack
Alexander von Roon as News Anchor
Leanne Li as Emergency Worker
Musics
The film score
was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams and Atticus Ross. Upon viewing the film,
however, Gregson-Williams posted a message on Facebook stating that his score
went almost unused in the final edit, which included synthesized music not
prepared by him or by Ross. He went on
to say that, "I therefore reluctantly join the long list of composers who
have had their scores either sliced and diced mercilessly or ignored completely
by Michael Mann." He stated that although he is credited for the score,
the final film "contains almost none of my compositions". He would
later delete the status update containing this information.
Mann later
explained that he often prefers to use more than one composer "to rotate
among different emotional perspectives", stating, "If a composer
wants to have his music stand alone, he should be a recording artist and let
his work contest itself in that arena."
