Perfect cast and a good story

Excellent but underrated film

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

So Michael Mann spent $70,000,000 on this incoherent mess, and it's 2:13 minutes of a straight-to-DVD mess. I think in the movie business they call that 20 pounds of manure in a 10 pound bag. There are lots of beautiful shots of China and Malaysia-too bad he wasn't making a National Geographic special.First of all, the romance was so cliché and forced. Sex scenes in movies are so 1980. There is rarely anything even approaching chemistry so why bother? If you want to make a romance, then make a romance, but don't make an action thriller with a romance because it won't be either. The woman has zero likability in my opinion, zero screen presence.Now let's just have a completely random and unnecessary fight scene because we haven't had any action in two minutes. No fight can make up for the tedium of watching someone typing on a keyboard.It just gets worse and worse, dragging on with shots of the girl walking (then sitting and pouting), everyone converging on one location (he can hack into an NSA computer but he can't remove an ankle bracelet?), and then we screech to a halt for a lovers' quarrel. ...then we're back with a sorta stupid shootout but I had stopped caring a long time ago.

Thanks to robk-952-110475 for his very thoughtful review and details.It is great to have the scoop from someone who knows the scoop. I thought it was a really good movie, but I will be interested in watching it after reading your review. I will keep an eye on those details. Appreciate the effort to inform others.

Looking at this film without any knowledge of anyone in it or the director (Michael Mann), I would have told you the following: It's low budget; and it is targeted to 15-year-old boys in Thailand, which is the typical blockbuster audience.And I'd be wrong. Low-budget? How is $70 million? And how much did it make worldwide? $19 million. You spell that f-l-o-p."Blackhat" stars Chris Hemsworth as Nick Hathaway, a prisoner for stealing money from banks using his vast computing/hacking expertise. After a cyber attack at a Chinese nuclear facility and to the American commodities market, the U.S. and Chinese governments join together to find the "blackhat" responsible. On the Chinese side is Colonel Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang), who, accompanied by his sister Chen Lien (Wei Tang), joins Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) and Mark Jessup (Holt McCallany) in LA. Looking at the data, Chen Dawai realizes that the computer code used was actually invented by a friend from MIT -- Nick Hathaway. Chen Dawai wants him for the team.The U.S. government tells Nick he will be going on furlough, but he wants his sentence commuted if he can identify the hacker. That is agreed to, and the team leaves for China. Identifying the hacker is one thing - but finding out the motive is another. Such terrible cinematography - it looks cheap and gritty. The story is too talky, and I think Hemsworth was miscast. What was needed was someone who comes off as intelligent. I'm not saying Hemsworth isn't intelligent, but his acting persona is that of a tough guy. This guy is supposed to be a brilliant hacker from MIT. Not buying it.The story was also on the confusing side.Filmed in Hong Kong, Jakarta, Malaysia, and LA, the languages used throughout the film include English, Cantonese, Korean, and Indonesian - which was another reason I thought this was geared to the foreign market.This is a Michael Mann miss, though there are some exciting action sequences and major shootouts. The acting from Davis, Callany, Leehom Wang, and Wei Tang was very good. For all her amazing talent, Davis didn't have much to do.It's an okay rental - I wouldn't have wanted to pay to see this in the theater.

The plot was good and interesting, the actors been well cast and performed good. The directing was for the first part of the movie good but got clumsy in the end. The only action scene that was good, was the brawl in the restaurant, all others been dreadful, unrealistic and brain dead.