“Blackhat is a term for hackers who write malicious code, designed to do thing that other people tell them they’re not supposed to do. So they do, they find vulnerabilities, they do invasions,” the always methodical Michael Mann recently said. The director doesn’t fuck around when it comes to researching his subjects. He’s spent the last two and half years making the cyber thriller “Blackhat,” and who knows how long his research took (his last feature was 2009’s “Public Enemies” if that’s any indication). According to a recent THR piece, Mann met with several real-life hackers, including a currently incarcerated one.
"The U.S. is involved in foreign espionage as aggressively and avidly as they can," he said in a seminar moderated by THR. "All of our trade secrets, our commerce, our defensive contractors, our businesses, our accounts, our banks… are vulnerable to invasion. I really believe I was doing the kind of research that maybe anthropologists do, where if they’re going to write about a tribe in the Nilotic Sudan, they go live with a tribe in the Nilotic Sudan for a year.”
OK, let’s just assume he spends more time on projects than you do. The movie stars Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Tang Wei and Wang Leehom, and is about a convicted hacker (Hemsworth) forced to work with American and Chinese agents in what has been described as a “cat-and-mouse international heist-thriller.” Here’s the official synopsis:
Directed and produced by Michael Mann, BLACKHAT follows a furloughed convict and his American and Chinese partners as they hunt a high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta. The film stars Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Tang Wei and Wang Leehom, and it is written by Morgan Davis Foehl and Mann.
Due in theaters January 16, 2015, the film may have a Oscar-qualifying run happening sometime in the fall. Meanwhile, the first trailer has finally arrived. Feast your eyes on it below.
i love michael mann!! this looks horrible!!!!
JH, spot on. What\’s wrong with Mann? This is now verging on the tragic. The films are beginning to look like crap.
To JH. Michael Mann uses digital not because it looks like 35mm but for its unique grain, blur, texture. He\’s experimenting it since Ali. He\’s a visionary director. One of the few remaining. The way he shoots the night it\’s a trademark right now: less cinematic, more real, full of neon, colors, lights. There\’s no more black skies in the nights of Michael Mann because there\’s no more black skies in our big cities. These are my two cents…
He shot with Arri Alexas in Arriraw, so it ain\’t the cameras.
It\’s the aesthetic of shooting HD – has nothing to do with what\’s better. Film vs HD debate still continues.
Mann is interested in how digital looks as opposed to film, as opposed to how digital can be made to look like film. Anyone who thinks this cinematography looks bad doesn\’t know ass from elbow.
Oh brother, enough of this sh**
*Makes Government look like good guys, makes hacker look like bad guy*
Michael Mann or not, this looks incredibly corny. This is some USA Network shit, only more production value. I fear the worst with those shots of computer circuitry all lighting up and the camera travels through them. Like it\’s the mid-90s and someone in a pantsuit will expound on the "information superhighway" for us.
thor as a hacker? don\’t buy it, mate. i\’ll watch this one for mann\’s direction, but grains of salt tossed every which way.
@JH he wants it to feel "real", but in the end it takes you out of the story. Like that part in Collateral when Jamie Foxx steals that bystander\’s cell phone and points a gun at him when the guy comes after him. It\’s memorable but it becomes TOO objective in that moment, like the movie just turned into a WorldStar viral clip all of a sudden.
I think this looks gorgeous
Unfortunately I have to agree with you JH. The entire time I was watching the trailer, I kept thinking, "What\’s with his insistence with using digital equipment from the early 2000s? It was barely excusable when he was making public enemies, but in 2014??
This trailer looked like a dress rehearsal to a movie, to my eyes it looked worse than a episode of big brother. I really miss the Michael Mann of the 1990s. I wept a little bit after seeing that.
this looks great, miami vice is underrated; that scene in the speedboat is on another level
Blackhat was shot on the Alexa, which is the most film-like digital camera there is. The look of his films has more to do with the way they\’re lit (or not lit) and the choice of shutter angle rather than the camera as a whole.
@JH, ye i dig the aesthetic
Why the hell would providing a link to the trailer via youtube be "spammy"?!
Or, via youtube:
Given how amazing digital can look these days, why does Michael Mann insist on shooting with a camera that makes his films look like reality TV? As with Public Enemies it makes what must be an incredibly expensive film look cheap – worse, amateur. Does he really think it looks better? Does anyone?