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Silicon Valley Security Experts Give 'Blackhat' a Thumbs-Up; Do You?
HughPickens.com writes Cade Metz writes that last week Parisa Tabriz, head of Google's Chrome security team, helped arrange an early screening of Michael Mann's Blackhat in San Francisco for 200-odd security specialists from Google, Facebook, Apple, Tesla, Twitter, Square, Cisco, and other parts of Silicon Valley's close-knit security community, and their response to the film was shockingly positive. "Judging from the screening Q&A—and the pointed ways this audience reacted during the screening—you could certainly argue Blackhat is the best hacking movie ever made," writes Metz. "Many info-sec specialists will tell you how much they like Sneakers—the 1992 film with Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Ackroyd, Ben Kingsley, and River Phoenix—but few films have so closely hewed to info-sec reality as Mann's new movie, fashioned in his characteristic pseudo-documentary style." "Unlike others, this is a film about a real person, not a stereotype—a real guy with real problems thrust into a real situation," says Mark Abene. "The technology—and the disasters—in the film were real, or at least plausible.
Director Michael Mann worked closely with Kevin Poulsen in researching, writing, and shooting the film. Like Hemsworth's character, Poulsen spent time in prison for his hacking exploits, and Mann says his input was invaluable. "It's the first crime-thriller to hinge so heavily on hacking without becoming silly." says Poulson. "We put a lot of work into finding plausible ways that malware and hosting arrangements and all these other things could be used to advance the plot and all of that I think turned out pretty nice." I'm a fan of Michael Mann, and the previews I've seen of Blackhat make it look at least like a passable thriller. For anyone who's seen the film already, what did you think?
Director Michael Mann worked closely with Kevin Poulsen in researching, writing, and shooting the film. Like Hemsworth's character, Poulsen spent time in prison for his hacking exploits, and Mann says his input was invaluable. "It's the first crime-thriller to hinge so heavily on hacking without becoming silly." says Poulson. "We put a lot of work into finding plausible ways that malware and hosting arrangements and all these other things could be used to advance the plot and all of that I think turned out pretty nice." I'm a fan of Michael Mann, and the previews I've seen of Blackhat make it look at least like a passable thriller. For anyone who's seen the film already, what did you think?
Where have I head this before? Oh right - Blackhat is the Interstellar of info-sec terrorism films - sigh
Interesting analogy, because the "accuracy" in Interstellar actually was somewhat distracting to me because it made the areas that weren't accurate stand out more.
OK, so there are magic space aliens driving the plot at some point. That I didn't have a problem with. Magic space aliens doing magic, whatever, it drives the movie, willful suspension of disbelief and all that.
Infinite fuel space-planes and the magical spaceship that somehow carried enough supplies for a multi-year mission while looking way too small to do that, on the other hand - those annoyed me. If they hadn't gone for the "realistic" initial spaceship launch I probably could have binned those into the "magic space aliens" "suspension of disbelief" category and just ignored them, but when you go for "realism" you need to go for "realism" everywhere.
Sounds like it's the same with this movie. OK, so the hacking is super realistic, great. Too bad the rest of the movie isn't, making the contrast just that much more jarring.
(That being said, I enjoyed Interstellar. It's a good movie. The science stuff is still a bit bogus, but the core movie is good. Sounds like the same can't be said for Blackhat based on the reviews I've seen.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Terrible. It insulted my intelligence at every opportunity. To pick just three:
This movie insulted my intelligence at every turn. I have a long (and spoilerific) list of all the what-the no-they-didn't good-Christ moments I saw in the movie; if there's interest I'll post them here.