The Michael Mann poll

that's like a latter day beastie boys line

hey, y'all wanna hang out and listen to the sacre while we jab and thrust?
I be eating Arby's fast food because I must!

total MCA line

I've got more moods than Michael Mann
Eatin' fast food, neon-lit like Japan.

first film was a left-extentionist critique /
now i'm makin' movies well past my peak

All my flicks except the Keep/
Are high-stakes games of hide-and-seek

Peepin' through a FLIR scope and a thermal laser
in a crulean blue Kiton blazer

I got around to seeing blackhat!

Initial thoughts:
- Chris Hemsworth is Mann's nu-Val Kilmer
- The hacking and computer intrusion in this film is more realistic than any other film I've seen recently, probably to the point of being inscrutable and boring to most audiences.
- Action!
- I liked the lack of exposition, the love interest having little free agency was silly. What's going to happen if Hemsworth's character goes back to jail for nine years? Well, she can be hurt for a while and then go back to dating. She's only been hooking up with the dude for the span of this movie.

I spotted (intentional or not) homages to Hackers and Goldeneye. There might be one to Sneakers hiding in there, but I didn't catch it.

Oh yeah, conclusion: I liked it but it's kind of forgettable

I also had a guilty nerdo thrill because I figured out why the dudes were all going to the same location but never meeting face to face.

Actually, the more I think about it, or rather the more I forget about it - why did the hacker baddie even need a heavily armed cohort of paramilitary hardcore killers? I suppose that question is related to my earlier query as to why, if he can manipulate stocks and accounts and stuff at will for millions of dollars, he even needs a scheme to amass more money. If he hadn't taken down a nuclear power plant (possibly the most ho-hum incidental nuclear disaster in a movie since they set off a nuke near Key West in True Lies, and that was a comedy), then he'd be an ambitious white collar criminal rather than an international terrorist, and therefore wouldn't need a militia. I get this is Michael Mann, but I wish this was more nerds and less guns.

why does anyone with shitloads of money keep doubling down to make even more?

Yeah, but one way was subtle, the other ... involved destroying a nuclear power plant, killing or injuring lots of people, and requiring a payroll of goons. Just seems strange to me that the guy would commit major, historic crimes in service of mundane robbery. Like, he's not manipulating the market to raise money to take out a power plant, he's blowing up a power plant to raise money to blow up a dam and flood a region to bump up tin prices. I'm no expert in these things, unlike every single person in this movie, but I would think blowing up dams and nuclear power plants and killing or injuring dozens is all the bigger crime, and the one more likely to get you targeted and caught. That is, the gains are more than offset by the losses. It'd be like blowing up the White House as a distraction that lets you secretly rob banks.

Like I said, would have made more sense if he was just being a hacker dick.

imo it's made clear he's a sociopath who doesn't give a shit about human life and is just about fucking the system to maximize his points ($$)

which is a completely unnuanced view of actions, but viewing some of the really destructive hacker types like that with nuance is buying into bullshit

I'm not sure that the movie establishes for certain that the malware activated at the nuclear power plant was intentional, although the soy futures trading definitely was. It was a test run of the ability to crash those water pumps, and the fact the nuclear power plant was affected might have just been a crime of opportunity. Malicious dude really just needed to crash some somewhere to make sure his later tin plan would work.

Oh, and at the same time, his other test run with the US reactor didn't work.

Isn't this discussion a bit like in Die Hard where they fake a terrorist attack to steal money? That does not make sense either. Also, I've been sick these last few days, so haven't seen it, and now I don't have the time.

You take that back, Die Hard makes perfect sense. They knew they needed to appear something global so that it got passed from the police to the FBI, because the FBI protocol meant shutting down the power, which turned off the electronic lock on the vault, which got them access to the bearer bonds. The fake demands and stuff were all a smokescreen, and they would have gotten away with it, too, were it not for ... John McClane!!! Just a fly in the ointment

why does anyone with shitloads of money keep doubling down to make even more?

The future, Mr Gittz!

I'm not sure that the movie establishes for certain that the malware activated at the nuclear power plant was intentional

The movie is actually clearer on this point than most! The fans in the reactor he disabled were the same brand as the fans in the Indonesian dam. Sure, blowing them up was a test run, but he blew them up on purpose. No idea why he wanted to blow up multiple reactors, but then, the movie doesn't make a ton of sense, motivation-wise. Like, even if it was just a test run, who tests things out by targeting a nuclear reactor first, especially when that kinds of fans are apparently a ... dam a dozen

who tests things out by targeting a nuclear reactor first

some people just want to see the world burn, Josh

Bad guy in this was so not written - like, literally, did he even have a name? - that there is no way to parse his motivations. The future? He may as well have been planning to build a space base near Mars.

And again, I would have at least been on board a bit if he just wanted to see the world burn. But what little we know of him was just $$$, which is zzzz.

Alternate version: the test run knocks out the freezer in two delis, one in Manhattan and one in Tokyo.

Yeah, seriously. The cost of the Fukushima disaster was something like $100 billion, and that's just money. Sort of an insanely disproportionate target. It'd be like him dumping millions of gallons of crude in the Gulf to corner to shrimp market.

(Incidentally, just googled, and the shrimp market and the tin market are valued about equally, around $50 billion!)

would you say that the shrimp market is "jumbo"?

"I'm a fiend for jumbo deep-battered shrimp."

*aerial shot of Eazy driving a trawler to the gulf of Maine*

wow at dropping die hard in as an example of bad movie plot. login rescinded for 6 months imo

Something admirable about this movie just popped into my head: it's called Blackhat, and they may even invoke the term "black hat," once, but they never explain what a black hat is, or counter it with "white hat," a term that afaict does not even get used. So hats off, Mann, for respecting the viewer a little.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film4/blu-ray_reviews_60/thief_james_caan_blu-ray_/large/large_thief_12_blu-ray_.jpg

need to click on that to see it in HD, fellas

beaver? i hardly even know her.

Are there any action - hacking scenes

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/01/27/blackhat-isnt-a-failed-action-movieits-a-big-budget-avant-garde-film

i guess i should see this, but i'm skeptical of the sort of defense mounted here (and elsewhere). i don't think mann's digital imagery--at least in the previous few films--is all that interesting, really. i also think it's a little too /clever/ to suggest that blackhat is an "avant-garde film," since that clearly wasn't mann's intention, and it seems to overlook the fact that at his best, mann was much more than just a maker of startling or appealing images (and juxtapositions of images). a lot of this stuff reads like special pleading to me. but i guess i need to see it now, just so i can have an opinion. :)

The same is basically true of Miami Vice, which is better as both an action film and an a-g film.

Jesus, my Letterboxd is crawling with 5/5 Mann reviews from all over his career. They're outta control.

Eric otm

eric, sorry, i had a hard time interpreting your last post. when you write that "the same is basically true," what are you referring to as "the same"?

what is letterboxd, btw, and where did the third "e" go?

it is a viewing log/diary site for cinemaniacs

I've got one of those: http://letterboxd.com/quartzcity/

what a waste of time (he writes, while posting to ILX)

Poor Ralph (Heat). Two or three of the most ignominious movie minutes ever.

my only complaint with Collateral is the epic "Max, I do this for a living!" should've been the last words Cruise spoke instead of that dead body riding the T crap.

blackhat seems to inspire the contrarian in a lot of reviewers. cant say i was convinced. chris hemsworth is totally the wrong person. not sure if it was the cinema's sound, but everything he said sounded like a huffy mumble.

No, that's Mann.