Black­hat

In box office terms, what Michael Mann’s Black­hat did in the US ear­ly in 2015 was equiv­a­lent to swan-div­ing into a swim­ming pool that didn’t con­tain any water. The pulpy mess was hosed away quick­ly and qui­et­ly, caus­ing some com­men­ta­tors to sug­gest that this would be the last time Mann would be able to com­mand such a seri­ous bud­get. As such, the fan­fare sur­round­ing its UK release is mut­ed to say the least, the sound all-but drowned out by omnipresent award sea­son gab­bing. Over here, it’s less a pool, more a shal­low puddle.

Yet there’s a strange para­dox at the cen­tre of Black­hat. On one hand, the film offers ample plea­sures to those will­ing to pick at its com­plex design schemat­ics, specif­i­cal­ly its inno­v­a­tive use of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy which reflects Mann’s con­nois­seur-like abil­i­ties to select the right tool for the right job. On the oth­er, its arch­ly dis­mis­sive atti­tude towards con­ven­tion­al plot­ting and stock show­man­ship make it tough to deci­pher whether Mann views his movies as portable muse­ums to house a breath­tak­ing col­lec­tion of style tics, or whether the job of ful­fill­ing audi­ence expec­ta­tion is just sec­ondary for him.

Alter­na­tive­ly, is Blackhat’s com­mer­cial fail­ure in actu­al­i­ty a veiled vic­to­ry for sen­so­ri­ly-inclined aes­thete Mann, or was there an inten­tion for the film to slot neat­ly into the cash-grab­bing neo B‑thriller tem­plate forged by Liam Nee­son and the Europa­corp jet-trash? If Mann were no longer able to com­mand top-end bud­gets, would that real­ly be such a bad thing for the peo­ple he appears to be mak­ing movies for?

Dur­ing the Sony hack­ing scan­dal of late 2014, it was not­ed that the orbit­ing furore was possibly/​probably more inter­est­ing that the sub­ject that caused it, the but­ton-push­ing com­e­dy fea­ture The Inter­view. This stranger-than-fic­tion occur­rence end­ed up being the stuff of shad­owy ​’70s-style con­spir­a­cy thrillers, and the intri­ca­cies of who won, who lost and who was even play­ing the game remain opaque to this day.

In the same way, Black­hat is less inter­est­ed in hand­ing us a cack­ling Jok­er-style vil­lain and observ­ing a wily game of cat-and-mouse than it is leav­ing us to pon­der exact­ly who or what is the malev­o­lent force caus­ing all this wire­less destruc­tion. It’s a film which is inter­est­ed in spec­ta­cle, but only with­in the con­text of real­i­ty. Often­times, real­i­ty is the spec­ta­cle, depend­ing on how we look at it. Com­put­ers mean that we no longer know who the bad guys are, or that bad guys don’t have to have a pub­lic (and by exten­sion, cin­e­mat­ic) per­sona, and movies that paint in those crude shades are sim­ply wrong. Yet even though com­put­ers are shields, they can be penetrated.

One crit­i­cism lev­elled at the film is that it con­tains too many shots of peo­ple sat down at com­put­ers and typ­ing. Which, with­out mean­ing to gen­er­alise, would seem a some­what hyp­o­crit­i­cal judg­ment. It’s true, the film does con­tain shots of keys being tapped, code being forged, mon­i­tors flash­ing with abstract, two-tone com­po­si­tions of char­ac­ter for­mu­la­tions and frames with­in frames. If any­thing, these moments are what make Black­hat feel entire­ly rel­e­vant and con­tem­po­rary, a state­ment on the large-scale atom­i­sa­tion and mech­a­ni­sa­tion of human processes.

Where a tra­di­tion­al heist — such as those that made for breath­less cen­tre­pieces in films like Heat and Pub­lic Ene­mies — would’ve once involved bod­ies and bul­lets, crime is now char­ac­terised by banal­i­ty, ease and progress bars. Elec­tron­ic synaps­es have replaced guns, but the lat­ter still do come in handy, and are still very loud. Anoth­er crit­i­cism is that Mann has reached a point where he’s Xerox­ing his own work, and if that is indeed the case, then there’s a cer­tain poet­ry in the idea of a film­mak­er resort­ing to the Apple‑C, Apple‑V func­tion at the ser­vice of a thrilling com­men­tary on absolute dig­i­tal consummation.

When it comes to shoot­ing on dig­i­tal, Mann could be seen as some­thing of a pio­neer. The gripe that it ​“doesn’t look like film” has bypassed him com­plete­ly. He accepts what it does look like and duly attempts to cap­ture images that synch up with digital’s sin­gu­lar visu­al con­sti­tu­tion. On occa­sion the film resem­bles blocky video art, with the com­po­si­tions verg­ing on the abstract. Although Mann embraces these qual­i­ties, Black­hat also con­cerns the ulti­mate fal­li­bil­i­ty of tech­nol­o­gy, with its com­bustible final image leav­ing a ques­tion mark over how far the medi­um has to come to attain per­fec­tion (per­haps also sug­gest­ing that, while many are hap­py to allow their lives to hang in the bal­ance of the inter­net, there’s still hope if we want to get the hell out).

There is a heist sequence in Black­hat, though it doesn’t involve any peo­ple. Mann imag­ines what a heist would resem­ble in a world where the phys­i­cal has been dis­placed by the dig­i­tal. It ini­tial­ly recalls so many ancient Intel PC TV adver­tise­ments in which the goal is to depict the man­i­fold func­tions of the microchip and some­how empha­sise its world-con­quer­ing prop­er­ties. The ​“cam­era” begins its jour­ney by hov­er­ing in the stratos­phere, sur­vey­ing a plan­et ver­i­ly a‑glow with gold­en com­mu­ni­ca­tion tendrils.

Then it dips down into a Chi­nese nuclear facil­i­ty, through the waters of the cool­ing tank and then down into the moth­er­board of a vital com­po­nent: an elec­tron­i­cal­ly pow­ered pump. It soon becomes clear that the cam­era isn’t there to sur­vey the mechan­i­cal innards, but to fol­low the course of a mal­ware pro­gramme uploaded by some unknown cyber ter­ror­ist. It’s a mas­ter­class in visu­al sto­ry­telling, with bare­ly a word of dia­logue uttered until melt­down is duly instigated.

Enter Chris Hemsworth and his mon­ster bangs, on lock­down for a cyber­hack­ing rap and fill­ing the hours doing grav­i­ty-defy­ing knuck­le push-ups. He’s giv­en con­di­tion­al release because a Chi­nese inves­ti­ga­tor (and old col­lege pal) believes he’s the only one who can track down the mys­tery hack­er. The film then stacks up the set-pieces which are linked with fuzzy GoPro inter­ludes and the cus­tom­ary neon-grilled night vistas.

Hemsworth gets to snug­gle with Tang Wei, while from the side­lines, Vio­la Davis casu­al­ly walks away with top act­ing hon­ours for her hard-boiled FBI stooge whose gov­ern­ment-man­dat­ed super­vi­sion grad­u­al­ly takes a turn for the Stockholm‑y. It’s easy to dis­miss Davis’ char­ac­ter as periph­er­al — a plot crutch — for much of the time she’s on screen, only for her to even­tu­al­ly appear in the film’s most naked­ly mov­ing shot pri­or to the final act show­down. It’s not pos­si­ble to say what it is, but rest assured: it’s devastating.

Maybe it’s too cute that Mann would reach his dig­i­tal apoth­e­o­sis in a film about cyber ter­ror­ism, but he proves this tech­nol­o­gy is still in a state of flux, wait­ing to be amply har­nessed. Black­hat sug­gests that the world could be crum­bling and we wouldn’t even notice it, with bil­lion-dol­lar bat­tles fought via text mes­sage and GPS satel­lites show­ing exact­ly where the sniper should perch for the clean­est, eas­i­est shot. When the day final­ly feels like it has been saved, Mann then flash­es up that haunt­ing final shot, remind­ing us that we’re just a one burnt-out microchip away from total annihilation.