Michael Mann: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best
9. Blackhat
Watching Manns new hacker-thriller Blackhat is a mesmerizing experience, but not for the reasons that he had likely intended. Everything about the film - from its gorgeous digital photography, to the performances from stars Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, and relative unknowns Leehom Wang and Wei Tang, to even just the way that the shots are positioned and the actors are composed within the frame - is of the highest quality, the top-grade work of a master craftsman making exactly the piece of art that he wants to make. Too bad the script is the cinematic equivalent of malware. To be fair, the movie does have its moments: an early sequence between Hemsworth and Tang in a Chinatown restaurant is memorably alluring, and Manns signature gunfights - of which there are about three or four - dont disappoint in their ferocity. Yet far too much of Blackhat is devoted to scenes of characters that you dont care about talking about things that you dont understand, and despite Manns best attempts to inject the films numerous hacking sequences with CGI and some admittedly novel camerawork, ultimately theres only so much that one can do to transform scenes in which characters hunch over computers with deeply furrowed brows into suspenseful set pieces, let alone interesting cinema. Blackhat is a fascinating dichotomy of a movie, a film in which A+ craft is diluted by C- writing. Credit goes to Mann for trying his hand at something different, but heres hoping that his next endeavor proves more satisfying.
