Hackers (1995)

Originally Written

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Hackers is a film that continues to spark debate as to the lack of realism of the films' subject, and the metaphoric imagery many claim it contains. But its quite obvious Hackers is in no way realistic, and it's supposed metaphoric imagery of what hackers at the time thought themselves to be seems quite flawed as well. The fact of the matter is Hackers is a "hack" film that may spark controversy between the computer nerds of the world but ultimately ends up being a cornball of a film to the rest of us.

Dade Murphy was arrested at the age of 10 for creating a computer virus that brought down over 1,500 highly important computer systems. As his punishment he was not allowed to touch a computer or phone until the age of 18. Now eight years later Dade is free from his governmental bondage and back to his old tricks again, having moved to New York with his mother he quickly finds his niche with a few other hackers. One who especially interests him is Kate Libby (Angelina Jolie); the two of them have a rather twisted love/hate relationship which leads to some humorous pranks at the beginning of the film. Things begin to heat up when one of Dade's new found friends hacks into a high level computer system and gets caught. Not only is he arrested by the FBI, but it sets him and all his friends up to take the fall for the creation of a horrible computer virus which is a cover-up for a 25 million dollar heist!

The film is actually quite humorous and entertaining for the first 20 to 30 minutes in which entails Dade getting revenge on Kate for pulling a prank on him during his first day at school. But when the plot of the film is finally introduced it all takes an extreme nosedive and becomes completely idiotic. The largest fault of the film is the horrible villain, who makes even the corniest James Bond nemesis look believable. All you need to know is this guy rides around on a skateboard the entire film in a mink coat... quite the persona of evil. As for the acting it's beyond bad, of course other than Angelina Jolie (who looks like she had auditioned for a Vulcan on Star Trek with the hairdo) none of these actors have gone onto bigger and better things, so maybe it's no surprise.

Overall, any way you want to spin this film's metaphoric meaning it's still completely horrible. When your best performances are bit parts from Latin singer Marc Anthony and magician Penn Jillette you should know there's something wrong. In the end, Hackers is entertaining for about 30 minutes then becomes so ridiculous it ceases to amuse or entertain on any level, that is unless of you happen to be one of those people who identifies themselves with this screwy hacker self image of the 90's.

4/10