Hackers (film)?qsrc=3044

Hackers
Poster design by Dawn Patrol[1]
Directed by	Iain Softley
Produced by	Michael Peyser
Written by	Rafael Moreu
Starring	Jonny Lee Miller Angelina Jolie Jesse Bradford Matthew Lillard Fisher Stevens Renoly Santiago Laurence Mason
Music by	Simon Boswell
Cinematography	Andrzej Sekuła
Editing by	Chris Blunden Martin Walsh
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	September 15, 1995
Running time	107 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Gross revenue	$7,487,370 (US)[2]

Hackers is a 1995 American thriller film directed by Iain Softley and starring Angelina Jolie, Jonny Lee Miller, Renoly Santiago and Matthew Lillard. The film follows the exploits of a group of gifted high school hackers and their involvement in a corporate extortion conspiracy.

Plot summary

In 1988, Seattle youth Dade "Zero Cool" Murphy (Jonny Lee Miller) is arrested and charged, at the age of 11, with crashing 1,507 systems in one day and causing a single-day 7-point drop in the New York Stock Exchange. Upon conviction, he is banned from owning or operating computers or touch-tone telephones until his 18th birthday.

Shortly before Dade turns 18, his mother (now divorced) takes a new job in New York City. Upon turning 18, Dade calls a local television station, dupes the security guard into giving him the modem's phone number (a tactic known as social engineering) and successfully hacks into the station's computer network, changing the current TV program to an episode of The Outer Limits. However, Dade is "attacked" by a hacker on the same network, (who goes by the handle "Acid Burn") and is eventually kicked off. During the conversation, Dade identifies himself by the new alias, Crash Override.

Dade enrolls at Stanton High School, where he meets the beautiful Kate Libby (Angelina Jolie), who is responsible for taking him on a tour of the school. After being told of a "pool on the roof" (which results in Dade and several other students being locked on the roof during a rainstorm) and learning that Kate is "Acid Burn" a feud erupts between Dade and Kate. Their eventual hacking duel, which spans most of the film, is judged by Kate and Dade's mutual friends in the hacking community, The Phantom Phreak, Cereal Killer and Lord Nikon.

The real trouble erupts when Joey Pardella (Jesse Bradford), the younger, novice hacker of the group, successfully breaks into an Ellingson Mineral Company supercomputer to prove to the rest of the group that he is an elite hacker. In order to validate this feat, he downloads part of a garbage file. Unfortunately, the company's IT employee Hal (Penn Jillette) detects this unauthorized entry into their systems and summons computer security officer Eugene "The Plague" Belford (Fisher Stevens) to deal with the problem. He realizes that the file that is being downloaded can prove that The Plague is stealing money from the company via salami slicing. The Plague enlists the US Secret Service to recover the file by claiming that it is the code to Da Vinci, a computer virus that will capsize the company's oil tanker fleet stating that he needs that code to destroy the virus.

Joey is arrested and his computer is searched, but the Secret Service finds nothing, as Joey has hidden the disk containing the files in a vent in his room. After being released on parole, Joey reveals the disk to Phantom Phreak in a public park, but they quickly realize that they are being followed by the Secret Service. The next day, Phreak is arrested. He uses his phone call to inform Kate that he hid the disk in a men's bathroom at school, that evening Kate and Cereal Killer ask Dade for his help but because of his record he states that he can't get involved. Kate then asks Dade to copy the disk so that if anyone else is arrested, they have the disk as evidence.

After determining that Dade is not the one who hacked into Ellingson, Plague attempts to enlist Dade's help to find the one who did. First he offers Dade a gift of a free high-powered laptop. Later, he threatens to have Dade's mother incarcerated with a manufactured criminal record. At this, Dade agrees to deliver Kate's copy of the disk.

Meanwhile, Kate, Lord Nikon and Cereal Killer attempt to discern the contents of the disk. Dade joins them, and after working all night, they find out the truth: it's designed to salami slice $25 million from Ellingson transactions. Dade reveals that he knows Plague is behind this scheme, because he was the one who wanted Kate's copy of the disk. He admits he gave Plague the disk and reveals his history as Zero Cool.

Determined to stop the scheme, the assembled hackers plan to hack the Gibson again. Kate and Dade go dumpster diving for employee memos with passwords, Cereal Killer installs a hidden microphone in the Ellingson offices, and Nikon poses as a delivery boy and wanders the Ellingson cubicles, memorizing employee passwords as they enter them. From the memos, they discover the Da Vinci virus, which is set to capsize the fleet the next day, and which would provide the perfect cover to distract from the salami-slicing worm. In need of help, they seek out the help of Razor and Blade, the producers of a hacker-themed pirate TV show, "Hack the Planet."

The next morning, they evade arrest by the Secret Service and converge on Grand Central station, from whose payphones they begin their assault on the Gibson. At first, their attempts are easily rebuffed by Plague, who calls Dade to warn him to escape before he is arrested. However, Razor and Blade have contacted hackers around the world, who lend their support with virus attacks, distracting Plague long enough for Dade to download the incriminating file.

Shortly after crashing the Gibson, Dade and company are arrested. As they're being led away, Dade surreptitiously informs Cereal Killer, hiding in the crowd, that he's tossed the disk in a trashcan. As Dade and Kate are being interrogated, Razor and Blade jam the local television signals and broadcast live video of Cereal Killer, revealing the plot and Plague's complicity. Plague attempts to escape to Japan incognito, but is arrested in mid-flight.

Their names cleared, Dade and Kate go on a date, Kate even wears a dress as were the stakes if Dade had won their earlier hacking duel. He reveals that the "guys" let him win because they thought that would be the only wa While relaxing in a pool on the roof of a building, Dade shows off his latest hack: the lights in several adjacent office buildings spell out "CRASH AND BURN."

Cast

• Jonny Lee Miller as Dade Murphy alias Crash Override aka Zero Cool
• Angelina Jolie as Kate Libby alias Acid Burn
• Renoly Santiago as Ramόn Sánchez alias The Phantom Phreak
• Matthew Lillard as Emmanuel Goldstein alias Cereal Killer
• Laurence Mason as Paul Cook alias Lord Nikon
• Jesse Bradford as Joey Pardella
• Fisher Stevens as Eugene Belford alias The Plague
• Lorraine Bracco as Margo
• Penn Jillette as Hal
• Wendell Pierce as Special Agent Richard Gill, U.S. Secret Service
• Marc Anthony as Special Agent Ray, U.S. Secret Service
• Michael Gaston as Special Agent Bob, U.S. Secret Service
• Felicity Huffman as Prosecuting Attorney
• Darren Lee as Razor
• Peter Y. Kim as Blade
• Max Ligosh as Young Dade Murphy

Production

Screenplay

The screenplay, written by Rafael Moreu, is highly influenced by the hacker and cyberpunk subcultures.^[3]

Shooting

The school scenes were filmed in Stuyvesant High School and the surrounding area in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan in November 1994.^[4]

Post-Production

Softley did not use CGI for any of the sequences in cyberspace. He said they used "more-conventional methods of motion control, animation, models, and rotoscoping to create a real, three-dimensional world, because... computer graphics alone can sometimes lend a more flat, sterile image."^[3]

Marketing

MGM/UA set up a website for Hackers that soon afterwards was allegedly hacked by a group called the "Internet Liberation Front." A photograph of the film's stars Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller were doodled upon, and the words "this is going to be an entertaining fun promotional site for a movie," were replaced with "this is going to be a lame, cheesy promotional site for a movie!" The studio maintained the site during the theatrical run of the movie in its altered form.^[3][5][6]

Soundtrack

The music soundtrack was released in 3 separate volumes over a number of years.^[7] The first volume was composed entirely of music featured in the film (with the exception of Carl Cox's "Phoebus Apollo"), while the second and third are a mix of music "inspired by the film" as well as music actually in the film. Among others, the song "Protection", by Massive Attack featuring Tracey Thorn^[8] of Everything But The Girl,^[9] which plays during the scene where Angelina Jolie's character is on a balcony during the party setting, does not appear on any of the three soundtracks.

Reaction

Some critics praised the film for its stylish visuals but criticized its unconvincing look at hackers and their subculture. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "The movie is smart and entertaining, then, as long as you don't take the computer stuff very seriously. I didn't. I took it approximately as seriously as the archeology in Indiana Jones".^[10] On the show Siskel & Ebert, Ebert gave the film thumbs up while Gene Siskel gave the film thumbs down, saying, "I didn't find the characters that interesting and I really didn't like the villain in this piece. I thought Fisher Stevens was not very threatening... The writing is so arch".^[11] In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack wrote, "Want a believable plot or acting? Forget it. But if you just want knockout images, unabashed eye candy and a riveting look at a complex world that seems both real and fake at the same time, Hackers is one of the most intriguing movies of the year".^[12] In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Despite her sullen posturing, which is all this role requires, Ms. Jolie has the sweetly cherubic looks of her father, Jon Voight".^[13] USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and Mike Clark wrote, "When a movie's premise repels all rational analysis, speed is the make-or-break component. To its credit, Hackers recalls the pumped-up energy of Pump Up the Volume, as well as its casting prowess".^[14] In his review for the Toronto Star, Peter Goddard wrote, "Hackers joy-rides down the same back streets Marlon Brando did in The Wild One, or Bruce Springsteen does in Born To Run. It gives all the classic kicks of the classic B-flicks, with more action than brains, cool hair and hot clothes, and all the latest tech revved to the max".^[15]

However, in his review for the Los Angeles Times, David Kronke wrote, "All this is courtesy of the short-circuited imagination of Rafael Moreu, making his feature screenwriting debut, and director Iain Softley, who hopes that if he piles on the attitude and stylized visuals, no one will notice just how empty and uninvolving the story really is. All the sound and fury in the world can't disguise the fact that yowling music, typing montages and computer animation do not a gripping finale make".^[16] In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, "As its stars, Miller and Jolie seem just as one-dimensional—except that, in their case, the effect is intentional".^[17] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "D" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "What's most grating about Hackers, however, is the way the movie buys in to the computer-kid-as-elite-rebel mystique currently being peddled by magazines like Wired".^[18]

The film has a metascore of 46 on Metacritic^[19] and a 37% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[20]

See also

• Cyberpunk

References

External links

• Hackers at the Internet Movie Database