A hacking movie where the Chinese are the victims? That’s ironic, given the outrageous extent of Chinese hacktivity into American interests that’s recently come to light.
Anyway, starring big, blond thunder-god Thor-portrayer Chris Hemsworth as a hacker, the fairly fun cyberthriller “Blackhat” should have starred Matt Damon instead. It should have been a real Jason Bourne flick. Instead, it’s sort of a poor man’s version, so while watching, try not to think too hard about that, or the whole thing will turn mildly ridiculous.
What’s a blackhat? An unethical hacker. So basically, in “Blackhat,” it takes a blackhat to catch a blackhat.
We start off zooming in toward planet Earth, and then zooming into Hong Kong’s Chai Wan nuclear power plant, and then zooming inside the wiring, and then further down into the electron-microscope chip circuitry, and from there taking a Tron-like rollercoaster ride into the reactor’s innards.
This whole visual amperage and voltage journey turns out to be a computer-hackery ride, resulting in us witnessing how someone just turned off the big reactor pumps. Leading to cooling-system failure—boom! Reactor breach!
A blackhat blew up a reactor, and now the authorities want to know if it’s a political statement. What’s the motive? There’s no extortion. But wait—now suddenly someone’s tinkering with the stock market! There’s been a run-up in soy futures!
Cyberdefense-unit captain (a whitehat) Chen Dawai (Mandarin pop star Wang Leehom), working under the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), discovers a link between these two events.
