Blackhat stars Chris Hemsworth (Thor). It had the feel of being a showcase vehicle for Hemsworth. It has similar themes of films made for John Wayne.
It starts of with hacks into businesses and finance institutions and escalates in a search for the gang who made the hacks.
Nicolas Hathaway (Hemsworth) helped write the code the hackers are using, he gets pulled out of prison to help the FBI. Other characters include Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang), his sister Chen Lein (Tang Wei) and FBI Agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis).
More wheeling and dealing results in some tough fight scenes and then Hathaway must take on the hackers by himself! (Like he needs anybody else.)
The film relies on Chris Hemsworth completely to keep it going and sadly Hemsworth did not pull this one off. I think he works better in the Avengers with the others to bounce off.
The plot of hunting criminals was confusing. You couldn’t really be routing for Hathaway because he was in jail, and he was only ‘freed’ to find the hackers. His character wasn’t defined enough to be a likeable rogue.
Scenes where Hemsworth fought three men by himself and was the ultimate action hero, made me remember the John Wayne/Clint Eastwood films. Only they could save the day, despite being ‘bad boys’ as well. But they had screen presence to carry off even the most basic script or repetitive plot.
There was no one else I recognised in the film and things could have used some additional clout.
I don’t think it really did anything for Chris Hemsworth. I would give this 6/10. Passable but not memorable.
Image reproduced from Wikipedia.
Trailer reproduced from Legendary.