Hackers
by Iain Softley
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DVD details
Actor: Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Jonny Lee Miller, Laurence Mason, Matthew LillardDirector: Iain Softley
Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Cinematographer: Andrzej Sekula
Producer: Iain Softley
Producer: Janet Graham
Producer: Michael Peyser
Producer: Ralph Winter
Producer: Selwyn Roberts
Writer: Rafael Moreu
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-08-25
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of Hackers
DVD Review: "Mess with the best, die like the rest."
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes it's all about how cool the movie looks, right? HACKERS doesn't exactly come at you with an airtight plot and, yeah, the story's a bit preposterous. Plus, since I'm not a computer sensei, I don't know how credible or believable the hacking content really is (for example, there wasn't such a thing as a Gibson computer). But, dang it, it all looks very cool. Blame MTV with its glitz and rapid edits and sensory gluttony, all elements adapted by director Iain Softley. And me having gotten all swept up in that whole mess of flash-over-substance, I ended up really liking HACKERS back in 1995. Nowadays, I still like it. I am very shallow.
In another existence probably much closer to ours, these guys in this movie are the social bottom-feeders, stepped on and bullied and ridiculed by the much cooler sets. But in HACKERS these nerds flaunt the power; they're the hippest and the coolest, a clique of renegade keyboard cowboys living on the edge, quoting Ginsberg and sneaking into your computer system, rummaging thru your cyber drawers like a viral ninja in the dark of the moon.
In 1988, Seattle, eleven-year-old computer whiz Dade Murphy (Jonny Lee Miller) - a.k.a. Zero Cool - introduced a computer virus and in one day crashed 1507 systems, including the Wall Street trading systems (this nearly causing a stock market collapse). He got caught, and in court was sentenced to probation and banned from access to computers or touchtone phones until his 18th birthday. Seven years later, Dade Murphy and his mom have just moved to New York. Trying to keep it on the down-low, Dade, now going by the moniker of Crash Override, still keeps his hand in with the online shenanigans, and he promptly hooks up with an elite bunch of hackers who happen to attend his new high school. It's cool, Dade's still got his sixes covered - that is, until he sees, falls for, is tricked and smolderingly tantalized by teen temptress hacker Kate Libby (Jolie), whose a.k.a. is Acid Burn. Acid Burn sits at the top of the roost and it doesn't sit well with her when Dade's hacking kung-fu sizes up to be at her level. Especially when Crash Override flings his battlecry - "Mess with the best, die like the rest." - and then proceeds to publicly beat her record at a video game. So starts their slow-burn courtship, which is the best part of this movie, that thing they do being rife with games of oneupmanship and sexual tension up the yingyang, with one gazing at the other in that romantic/calculating way when the other is unawares. You've seen this gazillion times before in other movies, but when it's Angelina Jolie doing the eyeing, well, the stakes, um, elevate much more... Also, the funniest sequence in the film features Crash Override and Acid Burn's effing around (on a bet) with the life of a particular thorn-in-the-side Secret Service agent (regarded as Hacker Enemy Number One).
To get the thriller portion of the film going, Joey, one of the hacker kids, a callow apprentice dreaming of being elite, hacks into an oil corporation's supercomputer and downloads its garbage file, of which contents unearth a multi-million-dollar embezzling scheme. The corporation's quirky cyber security consultant, the Plague (his real name is Eugene), with the Secret Service in tow, quickly targets Joey and his fellow hacker homies which then leads to Dade's notorious past being brought up. But when the Plague threatens to frame and imprison Dade's mom, the epic typie-typie is on - to expose the Plague's dastardliness, to prevent an ecological nightmare, and to win one for the "good hackers" of the world.
How do you surmount the Dullsville that, in real life, would be overweight, pimply nerds whiling away hours and hours on computer consoles? Not so exciting in real, right? The remedy involves casting good-looking actors, introducing a pulsing rave-appropriate soundtrack, and lots of sleight-of-hand trickeration featuring cool-looking and colorful computer imagery reflecting on and crawling by the logged-on users' mugs. These brief flickers into the virtual universe are flashy and dizzying enough that even Paul Jackson Pollock might feel queasy.
And, okay, just about every cast member is a walking stereotype, with the possible exception of Fisher Steven's oddball villain guy. The good news is that, for the most part, the actors' performances make these characters interesting. At the time a newbie actor, Jonny Lee Miller (Eli Stone: The Complete First Season) as the lead guy is charismatic enough that he grounds you into the movie. But it's Angelina Jolie, with those lips so pouty pouty, who made me sit up and go "Hey... wha - hey..." Angelina, whose sizzling heavy-lidded glances were so very come-hitherish that I almost crashed thru the television screen. Note that Matthew Lillard as Cereal Killer is also fairly awesome, and that Fisher Stevens injects enough quirk and ego into his role that he makes a hissable villain, although physically he's about as imposing as, well, as a computer nerd. That noticeable bad smell in the room is Marge Simpson-sounding Lorraine Bracco, whose turn as a crooked, not-that-sultry company executive is about as credible as a clown at your doorstep at 3 in the morning and as seductive as armpit stain. Not to mention, Bracco and Stevens simply do not mesh as a couple. I forget which movie review, but one line from it made me crack up. To paraphrase whomever that film critic was: Jonny Lee Miller, a new young English actor, comes away with a believable American accent, which is more than you can say for Lorraine Bracco.
By the way, I dig Crash Override's battlecry so much that I've since adopted it for my own. But "Mess with the best, die like the rest" just doesn't carry the same momentous, Ragnarok-like overtones when applied to not quite epic contests of Jenga and Hungry Hungry Hippos. My nephews and nieces just end up looking at me weird. Ah well.
DVD Review: 2 stars out of 4
Summary: 2 Stars
The Bottom Line:
With its ridiculous villains (Why Dr. Melfi? Why?), bland lead, and tired plot, Hackers doesn't even manage to be interesting, let alone memorable or good.
DVD Review: The movie has gone golden here
Summary: 4 Stars
With Angelina Jolie officially a super star this movie is becoming a
geek cult classic like TronTron.
The graphics are good and filming is nice.
It is the kids on the outside against the lame
straights on the inside, with a joker in the deck.
In the late 70's poor people couldn't get online: it just wasn't possible without megabucks.
By 1998 it became possible for ordinary people to dial up.
So movies about geek exploits became about myths of super-hackers.
It is the "wish you could" type of movie where the geek gets the super chick.
DVD Review: A teen movie gone high tech
Summary: 5 Stars
Hackers has all the correct formula for a standard teen movie. New guy comes to some new high school, then meets some girl who has a stuck up boyfriend, new guy gains some new friends, goes to some party, then gets the hookup with the girl at the end after having a slight fight. The only added twist is the fact that the whole movie revolves around computers and hacking.
The movie has no bearing on real life hacking. Although there are some screen shots of actual computer usage, for example I saw a unix command prompt as well as a hex dump, most of the computer usage is done by graphical cgi. For example, when they type on the screen, it makes a noise, or the fact that a virus actually talks to you.
Personally I think the movie has the high level of hacking done right. At the time of the movie, dial ups were the common use of computers on the internet. So in this movie, the characters keep themselves hidden by using pay phones and laptop computers. This is realistic as today's wireless networks and how hackers can be mobile and thus hidden from the real world. There are some other realistic methods done in the movie, but overall, the movie doesn't do anything specific. I think the only thing done realistic is the pay phones dial tone trick which I believe worked in the earlier pay phone models.
In this movie, I think the biggest flaw of hacking is that everyone knows who and what they're hacking. In real life, this is rarely true as most hacking is anonymous and not only that, it extends worldwide; someone in China, for example, can run fake businesses on the net and get credit card numbers from people in America. A realistic scenario that happens all too often and the question of whose responsible comes up. However, in this film, everyone knows who they're hacking and not only that, they have frequent conversations face to face where the main villain of the movie comes to the star of the movie's house and demands things which includes the villain hacking the FBI network to put a hit on his mother. Not only that, the hackers have a small time limit where they have to save the world from an oil spill. Silly, I know, but I think the movie has to have a main villain otherwise it would be a boring movie.
The DVD is exciting as it comes with a unique guide book explaining various things about Hacking and the film. One of the more interesting facts in the book is that when the movie was released, someone actually hacked the movies website and replaced the image with doodles. Another interesting thing about the film is that the director wanted to create realistic hackers by using clothes from thrift shops which is interesting for many reasons. One is that shopping at thrifts stores usually means you have limited cash, and everyone in this film uses laptop computers which in 1995 were quite an expensive piece of equipment; some in the ranges of one to five thousand dollars. Not only that, I don't know a single parent who would buy their teenage son or daughter a three grand piece of equipment that they use to paint smiley faces on. The next interesting thing about the film is that it features teens using laptops which in modern times, nearly every young person uses a laptop computer.. from the college bound to the business men and women, nearly everyone has a laptop computer at one point in their life.
Overall the movie was a good teen movie. If you like computers and teen movies, you're going to love Hackers. However, don't think this is some documentary where after watching it you'll be some sort of expert on hacking. As a matter of fact, I was thoroughly confused after the film. I didn't learn anything except that Jolie was strikingly beautiful in this film... speaking of which, Jolie fans can watch this movie for earlier films of her.
DVD Review: Hackers Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
This earlier Jolie movie exemplifies what innate talent the girl had even back then. It was great to see some of the other cast that went on to Scream, Con Air and some others. Definitely makes light of what the current technology was then and how it became ancient history in a short amount of time.
Description of Hackers
"Hackers" chronicles a group of teenage computer wizards whose practical jokes land them in a dangerous industrial-espionage plot.System Requirements:Widescreen format 16x9-enhanced Languages: English (Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround) French (Dolby Stereo surround) Subtitles: English French and Spanish Eight-page trivia booklet theatrical trailer Included Trivia Booklet Interactive Menus Video Format: Widescreen (no AR specified) Enhanced for 16x9 TVs English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround French: Dolby Digital Surround Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:?COMEDY Rating:?PG-13 UPC:?027616716927 Manufacturer No:?907169As a depiction of the computer-hacker underground, this movie is bogus to the bone. As a thriller, it's cartoonish and conventional. The premise (computer-happy kids hack into the wrong system, and the Forces of Repression come after them) is recycled from John Badham's 1983 WarGames. And the corporate-creep bad guy, played by Fisher Stevens, steeples his fingers and growls mossy villainous clich?s. ("By the time they realize the truth, we'll be long gone with all the money.") For all its postmodern trappings the movie is working with sub-prehistoric storytelling tools. But it does succeed on one level, as a movie about adolescent bonding and alienation. The director, Iain Softley, helmed the Beatles-in-Hamburg biopic Backbeat, and he seems to have an instinct for the emotions that pull kids together around common interests and the insecurities that drive them apart. The familiar crises of loyalty and betrayal have an ache of real loneliness. It doesn't hurt that the two stars, Jonny Lee Miller (Sick Boy Williamson in Trainspotting) and Angelina Jolie (Gia), are just about equally gorgeous and charismatic; their longing glances steam up the screen. --David Chute
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