Blackhat (2015)

Blackhat: Directed by Michael Mann. With Chris Hemsworth, Leehom Wang, Tang Wei, Viola Davis. A furloughed convict and his American and Chinese partners hunt a high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta.

“I saw this when it came out and my immediate impression was of a 90s techno thriller, of something a little outmoded, with its whiff of millennial angst and nefarious mastermind wreaking havoc on the economy; early on hacking even has to be made tangible for us as a threatening energy surging through a fabric of wires, a silly image.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFlaws come by a certain contrast between a world they tried to ground in believable dynamics and then a stock action hero – on top of having to be a hacker – walks through it. Thereu0026#39;s also a romance they donu0026#39;t do well at all. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI donu0026#39;t need things to be just perfect though. I go by what the Japanese call wabi sabi, joyous embrace of imperfection. Japanese potters will often line fractures in old tea bowls with gold dust instead of chucking the bowl away to go buy a new one from the store. The damage here is in how the thing came to be as it made its way to us. The real question for me is do I want this in my home, does it have value? I do.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI believe the main creative task for Mann here was both simple and encompassing, the journey through different fabrics of world, each with its own order and rituals. It is then a saga in the ordinary sense of following a larger conspiracy, not wholly satisfying this, but also in this more intimate sense; a saga of travelling through a complex world to see something of its very weave.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOne fabric is the modern world that entwines computers and the economy; partly because itu0026#39;s relevant narrative for all, but in this other sense it lets Mann unfold an artificial order of things – anchored in the stockmarket – that abstractly underpins so much else, from where reality on the ground is manipulated. Violence becomes representation – stockmarket prices crash. Coding as narrative of control. Hacking as ritual of control. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAnother shows rowdy Asian streets where schmucks like us go about their day, small in the tectonic shift. Places like Hong Kong and Jakarta offer those contrasts so we can see a more primal order of things in the shadow of skyscrapers. Violence as the drive of this world too, guns and chases. Itu0026#39;s still the same ritual of trying to control existence, the oldest game played by men. It ends with one ritual in Jakarta disrupted by another.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut thereu0026#39;s also a third fabric here, one that Mann has been trying to surround for a long time now – a different sort of energy surging through a different sort of fabric. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eItu0026#39;s the transient world of simmering horizons and cityscapes. The energy is a melancholy about their passing: reflection. Currents of air coming from an open window that for a moment chill the soul, wake it up from the plots – rituals of control – it finds itself caught in. The most poignant of these, the shot of a woman laying flat on her back on a road, sheu0026#39;s far from home in a strange place, life is going out of her; her eyes flicker up at the sky, a final rush of realization that a life has just been lived, this was it.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eItu0026#39;s this sense of presence that wakes up this potter to go to work I believe, inhabiting a world, and if you listen to him talk as well. Itu0026#39;s wanting to photograph Ali on the rooftop of a building, swooping into something weu0026#39;ve known – and expect to see again – a certain way, as narrative, artificial order of things, to find someone looking out in the middle of it. A more original questioning. Public Enemies showed to many how they just wanted the accustomed artifice.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eDigital has been a tool for this rediscovery, he sets the bar high again.”