HACKERS
A film review by David Landers
Copyright 1997 David Landers
RATING: * 1/2 out of **** - 3.0 out of 10.0 CAST: Jonny Lee Miller (Dade Murphy / Crash Override), Angelina Jolie (Kate Libby / Acid Burn), Jesse Bradford (Joey), Matthew Lillard (Emmanuel Goldstein / Cereal Killer), Laurence Mason (Paul Cook / Lord Nikon), Renoly Santiago (Phantom Phreak), Fisher Stevens (Eugene Belford / The Plague) DIRECTOR: Iain Softley CERTIFICATION: PG-13 (USA) for mild language and some sexuality YEAR OF PRODUCTION: 1995
Ever since WARGAMES, the first real computer hacking movie, Hollywood has attempted to produce more and more films about hacking. These films usually show the audience a look into computers that really is not impossible and is usually ridiculous. If it's not this, the exaggeration about what is real is usually greater than you would expect. HACKERS is guilty of all of these crimes. To anyone familiar with computers and/or the Internet, most of the movie is so incredibly stupid that you can't take it anymore. Those of you who frequent one of the greatest sites on the World Wide Web, the Internet Movie Database, are probably aware of the section for movies entitled "Goofs". This is the section for mistakes in the movies. Well, IMDb sums up HACKERS extremely well with the first goof listed: "Generally ill-informed and ridiculous to the extreme regarding the capabilities of computers and technology". And truthfully, this is one-hundred percent correct.
The plot, obviously, centers around computer hacking. More specifically, it follows the exploits of Dade Murphy, a young computer hacker played by Jonny Lee Miller. Miller should be extremely thankful for the film TRAINSPOTTING, because if it were not for that, who knows where his career would be now after HACKERS. The film opens with a young Dade Murphy being arrested for hacking computer systems. He was forbidden to use a computer until he turned eighteen years old. The film then picks up at that point, an eighteen year old Dade Murphy hacking away at the computer.
Dade later meets up with fellow hackers Acid Burn (Angelina Jolie), Cereal Killer (Matthew Lillard), Lord Nikon (Laurence Mason), and the Phantom Phreak (Renoly Santiago), who are basically trying to do what is next to impossible: hack the Gibson computer and not get caught by the FBI. Oh, and as a little sub-plot, Dade also tries to woo Acid Burn, the only female hacker in the film.
Really, I can't think of much more to say about the film's plot aside from what I've said. It's just a bunch of computer geeks (no, obsessive compulsive computer geeks a little too advanced for reality) running around hacking computers and staying away from the FBI. Thanks to this movie, the public unfamiliar with computers now has a distorted viewpoint of computers and what they can do. This movie makes computers look a little bit too advanced for their time, and the frivolous suggestions it makes are too many to list.
To sum it up, HACKERS is a terrible computer film. If you're looking for a film about computers closer to what goes on in the real world, I suggest SNEAKERS. Although at times it too may seem a little far fetched, it should be much more believable than HACKERS to regular computer users. Hopefully, this film didn't influence too many young computer users out to think they can do what is portrayed in this 105 minute waste of time.
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