Art Streiber
Blackhat
Michael Mann’s last film, 2015’s Blackhat, was both a commercial and a critical disappointment.
The film starred Chris Hemsworth as a paroled cybercriminal pursuing a hacker stealing data with horrific consequences and has many of the usual Mann flourishes — a shootout in a tunnel, dark romance and Mann attempting to show megabytes coursing like blood through veins as they move across the world in real time. The film never quite gelled, earning $19.6 million worldwide against a budget of $70 million.
“It’s my responsibility. The script was not ready to shoot,” says Mann. “The subject may have been ahead of the curve, because there were a number of people who thought this was all fantasy. Wrong. Everything is stone-cold accurate.” Mann says there are films he has made where he wouldn’t change a frame — “Heat,” “Collateral” and “The Insider” — but “Blackhat” isn’t one of them. In 2016, he reordered the cyberattacks in the film for a Brooklyn Academy of Music retrospective and liked the results. “I’ve revised ‘Last of the Mohicans’ three times, and now it’s shorter than the original,” he says with a laugh.
Art Streiber
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