Starting a new letter today and today’s movie happens to be the last movie on the fabled “Happy Tape.” I remember seeing ads for this movie everywhere when it was coming out. Of course, that was mainly because they had an ad in just about every comic I bought back then. There are a lot of good memories tied in with this movie. First off is the soundtrack, which aside from being awesome, was where I was first introduced to The Prodigy. The second is was during a movie night when I was watching this movie with some friends and Doug nearly died laughing when Emily said the bad guy got “pwned”. So let me introduce you to today’s movie, Hackers.
The plot: In 1988, 11 year old Dade Murphy, whose hacker handle is Zero Cool, is arrested for causing 1507 computers to crash, including Wall Street computers, and sentenced to probation where he is banned from owning or using a computer or touch tone phone until he is 18. Seven years later, Dade, having moved to New York City with his mom, is using the computer he got as a birthday present to hack into a TV station and change their programming when he encounters another hacker named Acid Burn, who kicks him out of the system. As Dade enrolls in school and gets used to the area, he befriends some other hackers, Phantom Phreak, Cereal Killer, Lord Nikon, and Joey, as well as starts a somewhat friendly feud with Kate Libby a.k.a. Acid Burn. One night, Joey hacks the supercomputer for Ellingson Mineral Company (nicknamed the Gibson) and begins copying a garbage file but his mom turns his computer off before it is finished. Unknown to Joey, that file is actually a worm that Ellingson’s security officer, Eugene “The Plague” Belford, is using to steal money from the company. The Plague infects the Gibson with a virus that will capsize some of the company’s oil tankers and blames it on Dade, Kate, and the others in order to get the Secret Service to help him get the disk. As Dade and his friends try to stay away from the Secret Service, they realize what The Plague’s plan is and what they need to do to stop him and clear their names. Contacting other hackers from around the world, they launch an assault on the Gibson in order to stop the virus, while also finding the proof of The Plague’s plan. Dade, Kate, Nikon, and Joey are arrested by the Secret Service but Cereal manages to take the proof to the internet TV show Hack The Planet where he exposes the truth and is able to free his friends while The Plague, and his co-conspirator, are arrested.
Hackers wasn’t well received by the critics, earning only a 34% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Most critics felt the movie was nothing more than an unbelievable plot and bad acting. However, Roger Ebert liked the movie and said that “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 archaeology in Indiana Jones.” There was not one, but three soundtracks for this movie, released over a three year period and featuring not just songs from the movie, but inspired by it as well.
This is such an entertaining movie to watch, even more so years later because all of the technological references they make are so dated. The acting was ok and I don’t think all of the characters were as one dimensional as most critics seemed to think. I do think the wardrobe in the film was pretty crazy, even for teenagers in NYC. The story, while not entirely believable, was decent and the visual effects regarding the computer hacking definitely did the job of catching your attention. My favorite part of the movie was definitely the music as it fit in perfectly with each scene. That and the blatant promoting of Jolt Cola. There are a couple of filming issues with the movie. Mainly some people’s mouths not syncing up to the words they are saying. There were also a couple of continuity goofs in the movie where something would be happening in the background of certain scenes that had not happened yet. Then of course, there is the biggest complaint with this movie. That the technological aspects were total crap. People just need to learn to not take everything so seriously in a movie and just enjoy it for what it is. This is meant to be a somewhat goofy, but visually entertaining movie about a culture that was really just starting to gain notoriety. Definitely a fun movie worth watching at least once, if not multiple times.
Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5
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