Legendary Pictures and Universal PicturesBlackhat might star the incredibly hunky Chris Hemsworth, but even that isn't enough to save this film. The cyber mystery thriller follows Hathaway (Hemsworth), a furloughed prisoner, who gets enlisted to help track down an incredibly high-level cybercrime network with the help of his other hacking friends. Viola Davis also stars in this 132-minute film.
The Washington Post's Michael O'Sullivan panned the film, criticizing everything from its dialogue to its loud volume thanks to "over-amplified sound effects." In addition to the movie's illogical plot holes, O'Sullivan also writes, "Blackhat is also one of the most visually unattractive movies I've ever seen. Seemingly shot on a shaky smartphone, [director Michael] Mann's blurry, jerkily edited digital video is hard to read, especially during action sequences.
"I'm not sure what exactly happened during a chaotic fight in a Chinese restaurant between Hathaway and some goons working for the film's Dr. Evil, except that Hathaway and Lien somehow manage to walk away from it," he adds.
Variety's Peter Debruge was a little more forgiving, but still warned that this is a movie to skip while also citing the film's "down-and-dirty" digital lensing.
"At his best, Mann's work explores the thin line that separates good from bad...But the story goes instantly clumsy from there, jumping between characters and across continents without giving audiences their bearings."
Sounds like a wild ride, and not in a good way.
The Huffington Post's Zaki Hasan, an apparent long-standing fan of Mann's work, also couldn't find any redeeming qualities in Blackhat. Once defending Mann's Miami Vice when no one else would, Hasan wrote that even he couldn't defend this new project.
"The cyber whodunnit (starring Chris Hemsworth as the most unbelievably buff, distractingly handsome computer hacker of all time) is leaden and clubfooted precisely when it should be sleek and sophisticated, and arrives with such a resounding thud that one feels compelled to start a forensic investigation before the closing credits have even rolled," he wrote.
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of A.V. Club found redeeming qualities in Mann's grand return to the big screen, but still described the cyber film "rough-and-tumble," giving it a C letter grade.
"Blackhat is, by and large, a decentered, minor work, full of things its director does better than anyone else, but which he's also done better elsewhere," he wrote. "That, however, doesn't change the fact that Mann is working in a texture—unfamiliar, chaotic, so hard-boiled existentialist that it verges on mysticism—that's major on its own."
Blackhat opens today, Jan. 16.
(E! and Universal Pictures are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)