Iain Softley directed Hackers, a crime thriller starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, Laurence Mason, Renoly Santiago, Lorraine Bracco, and Fisher Stevens.
The film follows a group of high-school hackers and their involvement in an attempted theft.
Made in the mid-1990s when the Internet was just becoming popular, it reflects the ideals laid out in the Hacker Manifesto quoted in the film: “This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch… We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals… Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity.”
The film received mixed reviews from critics, and underperformed at the box office upon release, but has gone on to achieve cult classic status.
On August 10, 1988, 11-year-old Dade “Zero Cool” Murphy’s family is fined $45,000 for his crashing of 1,507 computer systems, causing a seven-point drop in the New York Stock Exchange. Asa result, he is banned from owning or operating computers and touch-tone phones until his 18th birthday.
Seven years later, on his 18th birthday, Dade hacks into a local TV station and changes the broadcast to an episode of The Outer Limits.
Another hacker (handle “Acid Burn”) counters Dade’s attack. Dade identifies himself as “Crash Override”.
At school, Dade becomes part of a group of hackers: Ramon “The Phantom Phreak” Sanchez, Emmanuel “Cereal Killer” Goldstein, Paul “Lord Nikon” Cook (named for his photographic memory), Joey Pardella (a novice hacker without an alias and the youngest member) and Kate “Acid Burn” Libby – the hacker who kicked him out of the TV station earlier.
Initially, Hackers was a box office failure, but over the years, the story has become a cult picture in some circles.
The young Angelina Jolie, then only 20, co-stars as Dade’s love interest and rival.
After this film, Lee Miller and Jolie got married, but the union did not last long.