From my favorite movies..

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Read a book, people. This whole movie is a pack of lies. Kevin Mitnick never did any of this. He committed no acts of violence. He never financially profited from any of his 'hacking.' Check the American court records.

This was a great hacker film. But as Kevin said in a Coast to Coast AM radio show "Because the movie depicted me in such a false light and because it wasn't accurate I ended up settling a lawsuit with the production company because of it and it was never released in the USA". Like i said it is a good film about hackers but there will never be a real hacker movie. See the life of a hacker is extremely dull. Would you like to see some guy or gal in front of a computer screen typing for hours on end. If you really want to see something good watch "Freedom Downtime". This movie was made by 2600 the hacker quarterly found at www.2600.com. This film depicts the Free Kevin movement. and the fact that he was held without trial for 4 years. When given a trial Kevin decided to plea out.

Not arguing technical details or realism, I feel what is presented in this movie is an all-too black and white picture of hackers, or "Crackers", as the hero refers to them. Great pains are taken to portray Kevin Mitnick as a temper-prone, reactionary, asocial neurotic, with nuances of sexual dysfunctionality thrown in as well. Whereas, the hero (Tsutomu Shimomura)comes off as being the shiniest star in the sky.I would say this general portrayal is unfair, and nearly propagandistic in its intent. The movie really becomes a base for expounding the moral issues of hacking and 'freedom of information' in a society that survives on security. It is a clear warning, and it does NOT favor hacking or hackers.I am appalled by that, because a more open picture of both sides might have been painted. "Hackers" brought the world to the standards of today, and daily test the security and limits of it... likewise, "programmers" continue to strive for safety, but also encrypt for greed, control, power, and politics. It is not all back and white.Either a hacker OR a programmer are capable of accidentally, or intentionally creating havoc in a real world of banking, traffic lights, airports, and defense systems, although the chances seem less with programmers (unless you know about "The Singularity").All I am saying is that this movie is VERY biased against hackers, it allows them NO redeemable social attributes, and it radically stereotypes them. It is intended to PERSUADE you. THAT, I regard as a THREAT to my own individual freedom of thought, and when you cross that line... alarms go off.BEWARE of this if you haven't seen this movie yet.Did "Big Brother" produce this film? ("Big Brother" is a reference to George Orwell's novel "1984") Regardless, the movie has good detail within a fast-moving and captivating plot.Lastly, NO, I am NOT pro-hacker oriented. Mitnick is clearly a criminal with a long record of convictions dating all the way back to 1981... but, I don't like being told what, or how, to think about a whole class of people.

i think i prefer the original "hackers" to this, at least it had some humor value. "takedown", when you take into perspective the articles/books john markoff has written about his dealings with kevin mitnick [and the subsequent bling-bling-cash-money], is just a lot of lipservice for him and shimomura.but if you ignore the flawed story, "takedown" is still mediocre. the editor should have laid off the speed, we could have done without the mutiple "rotating shimomura" shots. imo, rotating phonebooths are much more 1337, if that's the effect the producers were hoping for.logue and ulrich did a decent job however. wong came off too mellow for what i took to be a rather intense corporate hacker.if you want a decent hacker movie, go find "freedom downtime," or "wargames" which is infinitely more fun.