Blackhat (2015) on Netflix
A hacker sends a Hong Kong nuclear plant toward meltdown and hits the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Captain Chen Dawai traces the tool to code written by imprisoned hacker Nicholas Hathaway.
- Netflix2.2/5
- IMDb5.5/1067,987 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes32%
Trailer
Plot summary
After a cyber attack cripples a nuclear plant in Hong Kong and another hits the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chinese government and the FBI decide to hunt the blackhat as one team. Captain Chen Dawai, of the Chinese army's cyberwarfare unit, is assigned to the case and brings in his sister Chen Lien, a networking engineer. In Los Angeles he meets FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett and shows that the remote access tool behind the attacks contains code he wrote with his MIT roommate, Nicholas Hathaway, now in prison for hacking banks. Dawai asks that Hathaway be freed temporarily. Knowing the investigation depends on him, Hathaway demands his sentence be commuted if his help leads to the hacker being identified and caught. He leaves wearing an ankle monitor, accompanied by deputy U.S. Marshal Mark Jessup.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Blackhat (2015)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Michael Mann said reading about Stuxnet, the worm that reportedly wrecked almost a fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges, gave him the idea for the film. He then hired real hackers as advisers, among them Wired editor Kevin Poulsen and Christopher McKinlay, known for gaming OkCupid to make himself its most attractive profile.
- Blackhat was the first feature Michael Mann shot entirely on digital cameras. Collateral, Miami Vice and Public Enemies had been largely digital too, but on each of those he still used some 35 mm film.
- To thank Hang Seng Bank for letting him film in its lobby for five evenings, Michael Mann gave HK$300,000, about 38,500 US dollars, to The Community Chest of Hong Kong in the bank's name.
- Composer Harry Gregson-Williams saw the finished film and posted on Facebook that it contained almost none of his compositions, saying he reluctantly joined the long list of composers whose scores Michael Mann had sliced up or ignored. He later deleted the post.
- The producers counted on China, where the film's co-stars Wang Leehom and Tang Wei are household names, but Chinese authorities never approved Blackhat for exhibition and it never showed there at all.
- The collapse was severe enough that Universal canceled the Australian theatrical release and scrapped Belgium as well, and afterwards Legendary took a 90 million dollar write-down on the film.
- Michael Mann had always meant the nuclear reactor attack to sit in the middle of the film and only moved it to the opening just before release. His later re-edit, premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February 2016, put the sequence back where he wanted it.
