Last night’s appallingly inert big-budget thriller on Netflix Disk: BLACKHAT (2015), directed by Michael Mann, starring Chris Hemsworth.

Computer hacker is furloughed from prison to help international force track down terrorist cyber-gang. Despite slick visuals, locations and multiple continents, and a couple of spectacular set-pieces that include one epic gun battle, the movie barely exists, and Hemsworth is given little to do but glower.

Among the film’s many flaws is a love story that exists only because the guy’s a hunk and the girl’s a fox, and they might as well bump bodies even though he’s a furloughed convict and she’s an intelligent woman who has evidently never been in the same room with an available man before. (And her brother the chinese intelligence agent is along on the trip, to — pretty much not have any substantial problems with the union at all. Understanding guy. And so fucking ridiculous on screen that there is no alternative to just shrugging your shoulders and saying, “It’s a movie.”)

Computer hacking scenes are depicted by swooping animations of burst of light zipping around silicon guts, which made me think of how much better the technology has improved since 2001, and how less impressive the effect is when it’s there only because the visuals would be pretty fucking dull otherwise. There’s another scene where we get to see a keyboard being typed on, from the inside, which just calls attention to itself. None of it imparts any excitement.

This is the kind of movie you persist with only because it can’t really be as lifeless as it seems, only to finish watching because to do otherwise would amount to admitting defeat.

Michael Mann has made a number of absolutely terrific, astounding films, including a number like LAST OF THE MOHICANS and MANHUNTER and THE INSIDER that are on my list of all-time favorites. (A number of others are merely very, very good.) Only memories of THE KEEP prevent me from calling this the worst outing of his career.

Tags: Bad Movies, Blackhat, Last of the Mohicans, Manhunter, Michael Mann, The Insider, The Keep | Category Movies, Science Fiction, Uncategorized