Blackhat is a film that came and went quietly at the beginning of 2015, despite tapping into timely issues about hacking and web security. A part of this might be down to the lacklustre ad campaign, or it could be that audiences refused to buy Thor as a genius level hacker. In the films defence it doesnt portray Chris Hemsworth as some bespectacled dweeb. Instead hes a brooding mans man; a convict doing hard time for computer-related crimes, who also has a high IQ and is quite good with coding. So Hemsworth looks fully capable in the movies action moments, punching and shooting with the best of them. Hes also tender and swoonsome in his romantic subplot with the female lead, and gets plenty of shirtless shots to show off that gym time. But on the flipside, the scenes where hes squinting meaningfully at lines of computer code, in a shirt that looks like its about to rip open from his bulging biceps, doesnt really ring true. At all. Cinematically its hard to make scenes of people typing code look thrilling anyway, but when the lead character looks far more comfortable lifting weights than hunched over a laptop, theres a slight credibility problem right there.
