Blackhat (2015) Mann’s Misunderstood Cyberthriller Outshines its Reputation (Review)

Despite being very divisive Michael Mann’s globetrotting techno thriller Blackhat has found its fair share of dedicated fans (so large that the decision to include the director’s cut was made by large scale demand) who act as a solid rebuttal to the tepid critical reception it got on its initial release. This influx of people reclaiming Blackhat as a misbegotten masterpiece largely stems from the director’s overall resurgence in modern film cultures. Michael Mann has always been a popular genre, despite critical lulls with films such as the beautifully ethereal Miami Vice or The Keep which was tampered with by studio meddling, he is largely considered by many to be a great director. Although until recently he was rarely regarded in the same echelon as “canon directors” and for many people Mann existed firmly in the realm of highly entertaining popcorn cinema. However, recent trends have seen people take a much invigorated approach to Mann’s work: focusing on the deep emotional resonance in his works, alongside the often unsubtle political plot elements.

Blackhat is a continuation of both these aspects as well as the development of Mann’s own digital aesthetic, with the director being one of the first major directors to fully convert to digital only filmmaking. With the film perfectly capturing the pure beauty of the blackened midnight sky, or the kinetic energy of a tense shootout. Although unlike his previous film Public Enemies, which tried to replicate a historical 1920s set with a digital style; Blackhat focuses on the digital world itself: cybercrime, hacking, digital banking etc. Like most Mann films it is seeped into a richly detailed world that seemingly took hours to research and develop. Whilst the plot is fairly basic global-thriller stuff – which sees a currently incarcerated hacker named Hathaway (played by Chris Hemsworth) released to help track down another villainous Blackhat hacker – the film’s complications come from the intense detail of the technological aspects. This includes Mann showing the physical act of computer hacking: following the camera as it flows through keyboards, computer wires, eventually going into motherboards.

The latest Arrow release contains both the theatrical cut (which includes two version for International and American – the differences not being entirely known) and the director’s cut, which has until now been virtually impossible to watch. Mann has always been known to edit his films, the most monumental of this being Ali: which completely changes the flow and overall structure; but Miami Vice also saw lots of post-release tampering which led to less than enthusiastic responses (mostly due to the removal of the iconic opening sequence in a Miami night club). Blackhat’s changes on paper seem not entirely significant but culminate to great a more impactful film on both an emotional and political level, although even the theatrical cut was woefully overlooked at time of release. One of the big changes is the restructuring of the two hacking sequences placed initially at the start: one involving the hacking and manipulation of the value of soy now takes place at the immediate start, with the hacking of a Chinese power plant coming in the middle.

These changes help to set up one of the film’s core ideas much more smoothly: the fragility of the economy in an ever-globalised world, highlighting how stock prices of one countries export can have detriment chain reactions to other, seemingly unrelated ones. Opening the film on the hurried floor of a stock market, with close ups of share price boards, culminating on a large soy shipment being rejected for the plummeted crop value all proved to be too risky of an opener for studio executives; far less exciting than the meltdown of a power plant – although even that is arguably a strange sequence an action film led by Chris Hemsworth. However, Mann centring his film on the relationship between labour and commodity values isn’t entirely surprising: Thief’s depiction of the criminal underworld is a microcosm of capitalist economy (complete with James Caan’s thrilling speech about the value of his own labour) and The Insider is about the extremities that corporate entities will take to silence people who dare to take them on in the courts of law.

The director’s cut also adds snippets of dialogue that alter how the film depicts the uneasy relations between China and America: an issue that persists to be an ongoing topic in contemporary geopolitics; one that even frequently enters the battlefield of cinematic propaganda. Although Mann doesn’t seem too interested in taking a side in the slowly brewing cold war, nor does he use China as a scapegoat for an easy villain (like many Western blockbusters do ie Arrival); instead Blackhat aims to highlight just how interwoven by technology these two superpowers are, despite often being staunch opponents on the world stage.

Other changes help to flesh out Hathway’s relationship to the other characters, predominantly Chen Lien (an ever-amazing Tang Wei) a network engineer whose brother Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom) – a captain in the Chinese army’s cyberwarfare division – is fundamental to the release of Hathaway, the pair of them are old college friends. Hathway and Lien form the films romantic arc and trimmed scenes remove deposits of exposition, leaving their relationship to feel far more physical, being defined by glances and touches rather than long stretches of dialogue. Considering how masculine his films can be, with his central characters often being strictly defined stoic men, Mann can be an incredibly sensual filmmaker. An extended sequence where the two lovers share an intimate moment has an incredibly tangible feeling of carnal desire; much like the romance between Colin Farrell and Gong Li in Miami Vice, the film is just as much about the deep longing between characters as it is the action.

Although of course the action in Blackhat is undoubtedly brilliant, featuring some of Mann’s most kinetic action thus far. There is a viscerality to the shootouts where every shot feels genuinely impactful when they hit a material, be it flesh or steel. This is thanks to both some impeccable sound design (the mixing has been changed for the director’s cut, with the dichotomy between dialogue and action being further exacerbated), Mann’s traditional extreme close-ups and an outstanding sense of space, with the large amount of people on screen never becoming confusing or clog up the action. A surprising amount of gore also adds to the weighty feel of the action, with each death feeling genuinely brutal and shocking. However, gore and intense action can be fun on their own but are greatly elevated by the genuine emotional bonds that run through the characters; with this film often being clouded by a grave sense of melancholia, which is aided by the expressive night time photography that feels like certain scenes exist at an ephemeral night-time, with the bright lights of Hong Kong illuminating the destroyed bodies.

A lineage can be drawn through almost all the main characters in Mann’s film; most of them are alienated, singular men whose professional lives often consume their personal life to control all aspects of their lives. But there is also a certain degree of philosophising that his characters do, with each having their own intricate rules that dictate their lives: Collateral’s existential hitman whose strict doctrine allows him to be an incredibly proficient killer, Heat’s Neal McCauley who refuses to let anything sentimental creep into his life at the risk of ruining his professional criminal career, or Muhammad Ali who, despite all his opposing forces, remained a strong opponent of America’s war in Vietnam ignoring the costs. Hathaway fits into this pattern in many ways: he certainly has a philosophy – articulated by his prison bookshelf containing philosophers like Derrida, Foucalt and Baudrillard – which includes targeting capitalist structures over individuals, but also shares a dedicated level of professionalism which allows him to track the mysterious hacker who serves as the fails overarching villain. However, Hathaway doesn’t work alone and over the course of the film, comes to rely on the people around him in various ways.

On its release Blackhat failed at both the box office, with fans and with a large portion of critics. It’s not entirely difficult to see why the film didn’t resonant with mainstream audiences: despite being an action film it is much more concentrated on the technical process of cyberwarfare and the film has an incredibly elliptical plot which frequently hops between countries and moves along very fast. It often feels like a traditional spy thriller drained of its traditional tropes and left with only the most essential elements. This allows Mann to craft a deeply expressive film that feels unique in its accurate depiction of the world of cybercrime and how the global economy has been drastically altered by the development of the internet and cloud infrastructure. Mann has always been leagues ahead of his peers in how his films realistically depict their subjects, however, it really does feel like he is one of the few Hollywood directors who truly understands how the internet functions and who benefits the most from it.

It is unlikely that the new director’s cut is going to completely change the mind of someone who outright hated the theatrical film; but the minor changes are enough to make it feel like a smoother and more cohesive film. Despite the differences, both cuts of the film provide a beautifully crafted cyberthriller that deserves so much more than its initial reception and is well worth reconsidering, especially given how many excellent special features are included on the disc.

Autumns’s Archive – Blackhat