From my favorite movies..

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This movie is the most technically accurate computer science / network security film i have ever seen in my life! Whether you are in the tech field or just interested in it, you will definitely learn A LOT from this movie!If you don't know anything about computers or are not interested in learning how computer networking really works, then you probably won't enjoy this movie.Anyone who rated this movie bad, clearly did not understand a single line in this movie. And was clearly looking for a James bond, highly unrealistic action or entertainment film.To those people, i say... "grow up!" "Read a book for once, or google something real if books are too hard to understand as well!" "Join the real world, and get out of your unrealistic entertainment dependency heads!" "Get a real job that challenges your mind, and stop bitching about things that challenge it for you!"

In contrast to most reviewers here I found a lot to like in this movie though I assumed it was a very low budget Indie effort by people with some good ideas but virtually no money. So that means the location shots and atmospherics were remarkably good for the zero-costs and even if some people looked at the camera in the cheapo-film on the hoof public shots, mostly they worked, I had a real sense of San F as a darker and scarier place than I have ever seen. What else? The music is really good and adds a lot to the mood. The characterisation and acting was mixed, though I found the NSA/CIA/Homeland torturers quite credible. The main character is a nerd but then hacking geeks are nerds and the closing line of 'A month ago I was a god' says quite a lot - he is a kind of Gordon Gekko of hacking but his morals are all over the place and he wants to have a conscience. Result is that he carries his morals around like a dying albatross around his neck and we find his a jerk. But I found the hacking community believable if not very lovable - rip- off artists who pretend they are super heroes because they can steal and break and enter using their brain power. Overall worth a watch because it wakes you up to American secret police methods.

I haven't seen a lot of movies, let alone hacker movies, but I can safely say that this one is NOT worth your time. For a start, it's really slow. This film could have easily been shortened down to half an hour without losing anything important, because there are countless of slow pans that feel like they are there to just because they look good and take up time. Also, many scenes could be skipped entirely. The story's message has a good intention, but is badly delivered, partly because you don't care about the characters, because you don't get to know them. You get bored by watching it. And that's a pity, because it feels like it has the potential to be a good movie, at least if you know something about the hacking stuff they are referring to. Right now it mainly wakes thoughts (and even that it somewhat fails to do, because of the above mentioned reasons), rather than being a enjoyable movie to watch. I have to say that I find the constant voice-over pretty good. Most of the things said feel meaningful and sound credible, and that is what saves the movie.The cinematography looks like you would expect from a student, with more bokeh than thought going into the shots. It often looks pretty good, though. Unfortunately, the nice shots don't make up for the bad editing and the lack of camera angles in many scenes. Many cuts are poorly made and makes it harder to follow the already not-so-great story. Also, you can clearly see many mistakes; the one time CGI is used, it's laughably obvious, for example. Another fail is in the very first scene where it looks like they remembered to add an effect halfway through the scene. The sound editing is the worst I've ever heard. Terrible ADR, awful L-cuts and clumsy and audible switching between different microphones. I also miss music, especially in some unnecessarily long scenes, and when there is music, it's the same feeling throughout the whole movie. I don't find the acting as bad as many other things in the movie, although it would probably not be considered acceptable in a good movie. I'm not that fussy with actors, though.-------------To summarize, this movie is not worth your time, even if you are into hacking movies. It fails to deliver an enjoyable experience due to shortcomings in many areas. However, there is a small chance that you like the pacing and the way they try to deliver a message. Up to you if you want to risk 90 minutes of your life ;)

I'm giving this movie 3 stars because of numerous things going wrong in it both plot and acting wise.First, The acting is pretty poor. The interrogation scene is as realistic as if it was put together by some high school drama class. The way the protagonists interact with each other is rather fake in a very obvious way. In the part where he runs away with the car the managing guy ain't even mad, like not concerned at all. Plot wise: So many things are wrong: The guy is inside a CTO of the data mining company, yet he hires a random street hacker for debunking his wife's cheating, and moreover he falls about the part where he clicks a link and all his information is gone. Really? The scenes from doing some operation to some other one go without much explanation, and in these cases one either goes into details or just non technically explains it. In the movie they explain for a bit, than everything major goes like nothing happened.