Hackers
                                                                                                
Director: Iain Softley
Year: 1995
Rating: 6.0
Watching this nearly 30 years after it came out makes you realize how much the Internet world has changed. How many of you are old enough to remember having to connect to a phone to access the Internet? I was trying to recall if I even had a computer in 1995 or if I was connected to the Internet. Soon thereafter though and it was a different world. So much less content and you could go have lunch and come back while your computer was trying to open a webpage or download a file. There was basically no social media and people had to fight on these primitive discussion boards called alt.this or alt. that. There was an alt.asian.movie board that had more assholes on it then a Marjorie Taylor Greene clambake. I can't recall what happened to those - just disappeared. Now we have so many options to hate one another. And we can do it on our phone. Progress.


 
This is a fun film though the bizarre unrelenting graphics used to display computer code working its way past security guards, through tunnels, into a maze of computers feels as old fashioned as the AOL my father refused to give up. It has two young actors who would go on to large careers - Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller as high school students. It felt like it was missing Matthew Broderick but War Games and Ferris Bueller were ten years earlier but possibly the inspiration of this film. A few other names with smaller parts - Lorraine Bracco, Wendell Pierce, Penn Jillette and Marc Anthony - and a large young cast of computer geeks. This is a geeks win film - over the establishment and the villains. I have no idea how much of this is possible - hacking goes back decades to Mainframe computers - but these kids whizzing around on their skateboards and using pay phones at Grand Central Station seemed a stretch. Again, my phone internet connection was so s . . . l . . . o . . . w.




When Dade (Miller) was twelve he hacked into a number of systems of corporations and brought them down and was cut off from using a computer. Now he is 18 and on the computer again. He hacked into a TV station and bumped into another hacker - they fight over territory and he is booted out. His mother and him move to NYC where he registers into high school and meets the Cool Girl. Kate (Jolie) is a preppy punk girl from a wealthy family - short hair, elfin ears, arched thin eye-brows and violet eyes. She hates him, he fantasizes about her. One of his friends gets into trouble hacking into a corporation - he downloads a file that is being used for illegal purposes by the weaselly system administrator (Fisher Stevens) to steal money and create an oil spill to divert attention. He needs the file back and brings in the Secret Service.  Kate turns out - not in the least bit surprisingly to be the hacker who kicked Dade out. They have to stop the spills and expose the bad guy. Hackers of the World Unite. This looks to be Miller's first feature film after a number of television appearances. The same for Jolie except shorts and music videos. A slick youthful film with them spending a lot of time hitting keyboards and code doing things. Today they are all probably working for Google.