Movie Muser

Something has gone terribly wrong at a nuclear reactor in Hong Kong, with the disaster being caused by a hacker breaking into the computer systems and shutting down the pumps. With fear rising that someone means to do serious harm around the world without ever leaving their computer terminal, the Chinese agree to team up with the FBI to take down the threat.

They also know part of the code that affected the reactor was written by a genius ‘blackhat’ (bad guy) hacker called Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), who’s currently locked up for his computer crimes. He’s offered the chance of freedom if he helps track down the new threat. He agrees, which ends up re-teaming his with his old Chinese roommate. However, the further down the rabbit hole they go, the more dangerous things get.

Director Michael Mann has always had a rather operatic take on whatever material he’s handling, which has worked well with the likes of Heat and The Insider, but at other times has come across as completely overblown. While not a disaster, Blackhat is unfortunately more of the latter.

As with all Mann movies, it looks amazing, with a tremendous visual style and plenty of panache, but the amount of effort that’s gone into the style tends to highlight how little logic or drive there is to the plot. What should be a tense race to catch the bad guys often feels like a slow plod.

It’s not helped by Chris Hemsworth, who can be a very good actor but here presents Hathaway as such a dour, humourless presence he gets more than a little tiring. He can’t be entirely blamed though, as you can almost hear Mann screaming in his ear, ‘Be more taciturn!’ It is however a good audition for Hemsworth to show Christopher Nolan that he can be glum enough to be in one of his movies.

And while some of the action is good, it also feels over the top, despite not being that extreme by movie standards. I think the problem is that they were so worried a film about computers was going to be boring, they decided the way to remedy that was to have random Asian people popping up every so often and shooting everything in sight. However, it seems a bit daft, unnecessary and actually lessens the menace of a plot where the real fear is that someone can destroy lives from half a world away, just by clicking buttons.

As mentioned it does have a lot of style – which is certainly brought out in the Blu-ray – and that does help to paper over the fact that its substance is a pretty dull and standard thriller which often seems a bit silly and is far too serious for its own good.

Overall Verdict: Blackhat is essentially a straight-to-DVD style procedural thriller dressed up in more grandiose clothes. It’s passable, but it’s difficult not to feel that with a bit more heft and thought, this could have been brilliant rather than just about ok.

Special Features:
The Cyber Threat
On Location Around The World
Creating Reality

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

There’s certainly a great cast of British and Irish actors brought together for Stonehearst Asylum – virtually everyone in it you’ll recognise from something – so it’s a bit of a shame that they’ve gathered in service of a movie isn’t bad, but which never really takes off.

It’s 1899 and Young doctor Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess) arrives at the remote and isolated Stonehearst Asylum, a place where Europe’s finest families hide their relative who have issues that they feel mean they aren’t suitable for polite society. Newgate wishes to study the methods of the head of the institution, Silas Lamb (Ben Kingsley), who is apparently trying to create a utopian mental health facility, where instead of the harsh, tortuous methods of the past, the patients are treated with dignity and as much normality as they possible.

However, it soon becomes clear Edward has ulterior motives and he may be at Stonehearst because of one patient in particular, the beautiful ‘hysteric’ Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale). He’s not the only one who isn’t quite telling the truth either, and it may well be that the lunatics have quite literally taken over the asylum.

While that last sentence may sound like a spoiler, the possibility is raised and resolves itself fairly very early on, and indeed anyone who’s ever watched films like this before will be wondering whether that’s what’s going on from the opening few minutes.

While far from a new premise – and the final twist is less a twist than exactly what a lot of people will have assumed was coming – it does have a few interesting ideas. For example, while there’s the distinct possibility that Kingsley’s Silas Lamb is genuinely nuts, he may also be running the asylum in a far better way than the previous administration – to an extent, at least.

It may not be original, but this Hammer horror style tale could still have been an awful lot of fun. The actors – from Michael Caine to David Thewlis – certainly give it their all, hamming it up and bringing a healthy dose of gothic melodrama to the proceedings. However, things fall down with Brad Anderson’s direction, which lacks purpose and drive, with the result that a film which needed brooding tension doesn’t really have a lot. It’s kind of fun but when it needs menace it doesn’t have it, and its revelations/explanations are sometimes so over the top they feel like parody.

I know I’m making it sounds awful but it isn’t, it just has far more promise than what it actually delivers. What you do get is decent enough though. It may not be particularly memorable, but it is kind of fun while you’re watching it and has a few extremely good moments.

Overall Verdict: This gothic thriller has plenty of talented actors and a story with lots of promise, but uninspired direction results in a movie that looks pretty but never rises above being decently watchable.

Special Features:
Making Of Featurette

Reviewer: Tim Isaac