For a film dealing with such a contemporary threat, Blackhat feels like it could have been made anytime in the last 25 years. The heroes say little and the villains wield assault rifles whilst riding speedboats: in short it’s a Michael Mann movie. Mann has always been an underrated auteur of the modern action genre, creating intelligent and unique thrillers with his own distinct ascetic (hugely influencing directors such as Christopher Nolan in the process), and Blackhat is no exception.

Here he creates some of his most visceral action cutting through an intricate globe-trotting plot, which allows for a refreshingly international cast led by Chris Hemsworth who fits the Mann archetypal hero role well. He even reinvigorates the 90s cliché of showing microscopic data moving through computers by filming the technology the way he would a city: moody, cloaked in neon and beautiful.

However, Blackhat doesn’t stand up with Mann’s best in no small part due to the weak villain. Many of his previous works have had nuanced, interesting antagonists (think Tom Cruise in Collateral or Christian Bale in Public Enemies) imbuing the movie with a sense of threat that, due to the necessity of Blackhat’s computer genius mastermind remaining hidden for much of the running time, is missing here. When he is revealed, it’s far too late for his Joker-style amateur philosophising to bear any real weight and the third act falls slightly flat.

Blackhat was a huge flop in the US and is subsequently going straight to DVD in many countries, but Mann has recovered from box office disasters before; let’s hope he does so again because he is one of the few interesting voices in the increasingly stale landscape of big budget action cinema.

Peter Brearley

Images: Universal Pictures