Simply A Masterpiece

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It's a fun little movie. Yeah, it's a dated product of it's time. For me that's a charm. The 'hacking' is dumb; but if you let go of that stuff it is an enjoyable movie.

Thought of not giving this film a shot. Based on many screenshots. It looked so weird, ugly, and kinda nerdy. Jolie looked like a boy. They gave it enough times and now word hackers mean something unlike back in the day. So I saw it recently. I really liked it. My type of film. It had weird actors I like in it. The Black guy from the crow. I had thought that was his only movie. The arab guy from Short Circuit 2. Scream Actor who I've always been a fan of. Lorraine Braco from the sopranos in a sexy role. Fbi black guy whos in a lot of stuff. Most of these actors are unrecognizable in these roles. If I weren't good in films I wouldn't recognize them and in such odd but cool roles. The roles that they are typical famous for doesn't suit them in the sense that you can tell they've got talent and could do such much more. I enjoyed watching these stars in cool 90's trip films.Now to get to the story. Though Im sure back in the day some people knew what hacking was I don't think is as relevant as it is today. Im sure this film wouldve been more successful had it been made today. Perphaps a reboot. So many cool 90's films fall victim to this like Johnny Dmnoneic. I think the matrix though hard to believe is a good example of this. It probably wouldve made more money today since even than the world wasn't as gadgety as it is today.Don't know why Anjelina doesn't get recognize for this. She used to make such cool bad ass films in the 90's. But shes mostly recognize for the new big budget films. In this film she was almost ugly. Her character was cool and interesting. I've always enjoyed the cool trip chick that was down with tech stuff but not she looked almost like a boy. You can easily tell she got a ton of surgery and probably had to to get where she is now. But my question is was it really worth it? I much prefer her back in the day even with all her uglyiness.So in conclusion Im glad I finally watched this now. Though I probably wouldve enjoyed it back in the day. I personally didn't get into technology way later in life. Waaayyyy Laaatttterr. So watching it now I got to understand it much better.

"Hackers" is exactly as the name implies. However, much of the film makes it appear hackers can target credit cards, alter traffic light systems, and issue arrest warrants at will. Certainly, hackers have done things on a large scale, such as the recent hacking of Sony Pictures Studio and Target stores. If hackers really had the ability to do all the things implied by the film, we wouldn't be able to function in the mechanized world as it is.The film begins when Dade Murphy (Jonny Lee Miller), age 11, engaged one of the most successful and damaging computer hacks in the history of internet infiltration, crashing 1500+ systems. He's sentenced to probation, his parents fined $10,000's, and he's forbidden to use a computer until age 18. Fast-forward 7 years. Now he's at a high school in New York where he meets fellow computer hackers Kate Libby, a.k.a. Acid Burn (Angelina Jolie), Ramόn Sánchez (Renoly Santiago), Joey Pardella (Jesse Bradford) and Lord Nikon (Laurence Mason). At first they see hacking as a kind of game, looking to one-up each other.Dade and Kate then decide to have a competition: who can do the best hacking of one of the poor schmucks from the FBI who has been targeting hackers, Agent William "Dick" Gill. The stakes: if she loses, she has to go on a date with him and wear a dress, or if he loses, he has to become her slave. So they begin the competition, a kind of virtual football match, in true hacking style. They invalidate his credit card, put up a porn ad in his name and give out his business phone number where NY gays and transvestites can call him. They even pull the worst trick: they indicate in his file that he's deceased.It's all good fun until the youngest of the hackers, Joey, breaks into "The Gibson", an Ellingson Mineral Company supercomputer. He notices there's a strange virus in the system and downloads some of it, putting it on a partially downloaded 3.5" floppy disk (remember those?). The FBI at the behest of their systems security analyst Eugene Belford, a.k.a. The Plague (Fisher Stevens), tracks down Joey and arrests him, but not before he hides the disk. Later, Belford and the FBI storm into Joey's house, and the systems security analyst Belford threatens Dade to give them the information they want, which is hidden on the disk. Dade declines saying he doesn't play well with others, to which Belford takes out his frustration on a piece of music equipment in Dade's bedroom. The hackers then discover a virus, which was not written by the hackers, is going to wreak havoc with the company via large cargo ships at sea. They realize the blame will most likely be put on them.While this is certainly not the best film of this type, it's a good one. Some of the visuals are stunning, and interestingly, the movie doesn't come off dated even though it was produced a couple of decades before this writing. The characters are rather interesting, depicting Generation X types who hack into computer systems, not for a living, but for fun. And I liked Fisher Stevens as the former hacker turned security analyst who understands hacker culture. This film was made from the point of view of young computer geeks of Generation X. The older generation, Boomers and Silent in other words, come off rather stilted and nondescript, which I agree is a good depiction, being a Generation X'er myself.

Making a movie about computers is difficult. Even the latest equipment looks ridiculously antique within a few years of release. There is not really anything to see -- just people sitting at keyboards. You must interpret it poetically. There is not much action. The public has no idea what is really going on.The best attempts, like Tron, work at two levels, direct action for the kids, and subtle in-jokes and metaphors for the computer savvy.Hackers has lots of energy, but it is downright silly.For a start, the techno-babble is complete gibberish. The screenwriters did not even know the difference between a modem, a screen and RAM. I think they composed the dialogue by looking up computer jargon in a dictionary and throwing the words into a hat. They make zero attempt at plausibility.This incompetence quickly destroys the illusion we are viewing whiz kids capable of bringing down civilisation as we know if they so chose.Most of the dialogue is theme and variation on "I'm the king of the castle, and you're the dirty rascal". It sounds like something first graders would say. It is so juvenile, it is jarring.Another jarring thing. Dade and his mother stayed in a one-bedroom apartment where mom slept on the couch. Yet Dade had thousands of dollars to spend on clothes and hairstyling.There is a goony character called Cereal. He appears to be brain damaged, perhaps from too many drugs. Yet we are supposed to believe he took over all TV channels of earth.But the main problem with the movie was the lead Dade, played by Johnny Lee Miller. He was badly miscast. His hair was expensively bleached and each curl pressed into place. He wore a leather jacket costing thousands of dollars that Liberace might have coveted. His facial features were so sharp he could cut cheese with them, but he had no sizzle. He came across as soggy as yesterday's waffle, a sort of young Lawrence Welk. His voice was as flat as Houston astronaut ground control.Angelina Jolie did a great job with the atrocious dialogue they handed her. She was like a time bomb about to explode. It is too bad the movie was not written more around her acting skills.A touch I did like was the way the characters got around their city with dazzling speed on roller blades. It added some visual excitement and flash.Some of the CGI visuals to poetically represent hacking into computers were of course completely unrealistic, but at least interesting and metaphorically evocative.A movie is a team. The writers were incompetent though the basic plot was quite clever. Most of the actors were great. The visual effects people were ahead of their time (but of course dated now). A movie is as good as its weakest link.