Line #36 Film/Blackhat


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blackhat.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:A very chilling message.]]
3
4	->'''Hathaway''': You have any idea how much progress you're gonna make on a strike this complex without someone like me? Zero.\
5	'''Frank''': This isn't a negotiation.\
6	'''Hathaway''': Well, I just made it one.
7
8	''Blackhat'' is an action/thriller directed by Creator/MichaelMann that stars Creator/ChrisHemsworth and Creator/TangWei, with supporting roles from Creator/ViolaDavis and Creator/LeehomWang.
9
10	A nuclear power plant in China is hacked and its coolant pumps are destroyed without the systems notifying the workers. The Chinese government finds out that the hack was possible by using a Remote Access Tool (RAT) to create a backdoor and that the US also suffered an attack with a similar tool without ill effect. China wants the FBI to release the RAT so that their Chief of Cyber Security Chen Dawai (Wang) can look into it. The FBI hesitantly works with Chen, enlisting the help of their cyber security expert Carol Barrett (Davis), and gives into Chen's demand that convicted hacker Nicholas Hathaway (Hemsworth) be released to help to investigate who's behind the attacks, as the RAT was his tool.
11
12	The movie was released to theaters on January 16th, 2015.
13
14	----
15	!!Tropes associated with ''Blackhat'' include:
16
17	* BadassCrew: Almost every character in their respective domains. Special points go to Barrett (who [[spoiler:manages to intimidate a chief of the Mercantile Trade Exchange into giving the private information of thousands of investors to the government and a foreign power in less than 15 seconds]]), Hathaway (for being a tough hacker all-around) and Jessup (who [[spoiler:manages to take down 4 of Kassar's men loaded for bear in the Quarry Bay's hit with just his 1911 before going down for good]]).
18	* BavarianFireDrill: Nicholas uses this to sneak into a server farm. Step one for said drill involved [[CarMeetsHouse smashing half of the server farm's building with a truck]], followed by walking past the emergency services as they dealt with it.
19	* BigBad: Sadak, the master evil hacker with the lots of money and hired mercenaries.
20	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Hathaway and Lien foil Sadak's evil plans (he even manages to kill [[BigBad Sadak]] and [[TheDragon Kassar]] and live to tell about it ''and'' keep the 74 million USD he took from Sadak), but Chen is dead--as are Carol Barrett and Mark Jessup, the FBI agents who would vouch for him. As such, he has to live in hiding from the NSA and the Ministry of State Security (MSS) for possibly the rest of his life, for hacking into [=BlackWidow=] and the death of Chen, who was a Chinese high-rank military official. And Lien also shares his fate, due to the fact that she was witness of the hack and part of the plan to kill Sadak and company. At least he's not back in prison.]]
21	* ChekhovsSkill: Hathaway mentions at one point that he was forced to fight for his life a lot in prison; which ended up making him a spectacularly brutal close-quarters combat fighter (doubly so with a knife or shiv... like the sharpened screwdriver that he brings concealed to the final confrontation).
22	* CombatPragmatist: Everyone, as befits the gritty, criminal setting of the movie. Nicholas is a prime example, especially in the [[ImprovisedWeapon restaurant brawl]], but [[TheDragon Kassar]] has to take the cake. He rigs a sewer with Claymores after using it to escape, shredding a pursuing police squad. [[spoiler: When he goes after the protagonists later on, he ''starts'' by blowing up their car.]]
23	* ConcealmentEqualsCover: Repeatedly averted; bus shelters, cars and shipping containers may keep the heroes out of sight, but none of them stop incoming fire.
24	* TheDragon: Kassar, a veteran of the Lebanese Civil War (Maronite Catholic, specifically), now explicitly working as a mercenary.
25	* DroppedABridgeOnHim: [[spoiler:Barrett gets machine-gunned by Kassar and his cronies before she can even draw her gun.]]
26	* DuelingHackers: Nicholas and Sadak, the hacker that instigated the nuclear power plant failure.
27	* EnhanceButton: Zig-zagged.
28	** In one scene, the characters are looking at a video camera footage but don't use the classic CSI enhance button to identify particular markings on a person.
29	** In another, the characters make use of an NSA program to reconstruct a program from corrupted data.
30	* EvilCounterpart: Hathaway and Sadak. [[spoiler:Both are hackers and criminals, and both have a brutally practical view on life and society. The difference between them is that where Hathaway owns up his actions and styles himself as a typical fight-the-system hacker (never harming people), Sadak is deeply sociopathic (even to his companions) and only cares about making money and doing things his way.]]
31	* HollywoodEncryption: Averted. Encrypted data comes across the team but both Nicholas and Chen nearly give up on the lead as it's using [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard GPG encryption]] with a 512-bit key.
32	* HollywoodHacking: Mostly averted. Seen the Shown Their Work entry.
33	* ImprobableAimingSkills: In the final confrontation, Hathaway is very handy with a pistol for a hacker who has spent the last few years in jail. The film is silent on his previous firearms experience, but even if he was a shooter, he would have missed a lot of range time. Averted ''somewhat'' for his hand-to-hand fighting skills--see ChekhovsSkill above.
34	* JerkAssHasAPoint: The NSA official is depicted as being obstructive and petty for not allowing the team to use the Black Widow program. This overlooks the fact that neither he nor the NSA can be blamed for not wanting Chinese nationals - one of whom is a ''Captain in the PLA's cyber warfare unit'' - to get a look at anything so valuable, not to mention knowing ''how'' to access their wider database. One single collaboration, no matter how important, doesn't erase their fact their nations are still at odds and regularly commit espionage on each other.
35	* JumpScare: A rather nasty one when [[spoiler: Chen is [[DroppedABridgeOnHim blown up]] in his car by Kassar]].
36	* MiddleEasternTerrorists: Kassar is an rare non-Islamic example of this trope, since he is an Lebanese Maronite Catholic mercenary as an veteran from the Lebanese Civil War. He also happens to command [[FarEastAsianTerrorists Indonesian terrorists on Sadak's payroll in Hong Kong and Indonesia]].
37	* MySisterIsOffLimits: Downplayed. When Chen finds out that Hathaway and Lien are sleeping together he doesn't try to stop them, but he does tell Hathaway that the relationship doesn't have much of a future, even if Hathaway doesn't have to go back to jail. He's "damaged goods."
38	** Played straight earlier in the film, when Lien is chatting up a guy in a bar, and Chen tells him to get lost (Lien complains Chen cost her a martini). Chen was there to get help from his sister in fighting the hacker, but still.
39	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Hathaway is based on real-life hacker-turned-consultant [[https://www.wired.com/2013/04/stephen-watt-stalked-by-past/ Stephen Huntley Watt]].
40	* NonActionBigBad: Befitting a film where the main villain is a hacker, [[spoiler: it turns out that the guy responsible for all this trouble is, essentially, a fat Dutch guy with a pen knife who lasts all of about five seconds once Nicholas gets close to him]].
41	* OnlyInItForTheMoney: Discussed as a motivation as to why the hackers are doing what they do. [[spoiler: Turns out the villain's motive was to manipulate the stock market more than anyone ever had. Causing a meltdown on a Chinese nuclear reactor? Just practice. Probably causing wide-spread ecological damage and destroying villages that just happen to be close to some tin mines he wishes to flood? Collateral. Further Discussed to the point of subversion when Sadak outright says he doesn't ''need'' the money. He can always find another "bankroll", and his tone implies it wouldn't be difficult. He wants the notoriety and ego boost of having fucked over an entire nation and the world commodities market [[ForTheEvulz just because he can]].]]
42	* OohMeAccentsSlipping: Chris Hemsworth does an admirable job attempting an American Southern accent (he's Australian, for those who don't know), but unfortunately he isn't completely successful in the endeavor.
43	* Post911TerrorismMovie: Set itself up as one as Carol's motivation for going after the terrorist at all costs is because she lost her husband in 9/11. [[spoiler:Rather fittingly, the last thing she sees before she dies is a tower]].
44	* ProductPlacement: The Android mobile OS is the only product that is said by name and is prominently featured.
45	* PrisonsAreGymnasiums: When we first meet Hathaway, he's exercising on his cell. The fact [[HadTobeSharp he had to work out and get stronger or die]] is the HandWave given to why the super-hacker that created the RAT code Sadak is using is... well... Creator/ChrisHemsworth.
46	* RecruitingTheCriminal: Chen recruits Hathaway, a convicted hacker, to fight another hacker. Hathaway is released from jail for this mission.
47	* ReCut: As with other Creator/MichaelMann movies, he made a director's cut where, among other things, the attack on the soy futures happens before the attack on the nuclear power plant.
48	* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: Carol allows Nicholas to hack NSA because it's the best shot at finding the bad guy.
49	* ShownTheirWork: Michael Mann hired computer security experts and white hat hackers to ensure realism of the scenes where it mattered. This includes actual (if fake) source code, disassembly dumps, usage of real commands, and highly plausible techniques where "drops" happen. Mann also made Chris Hemsworth train to type like a real hacker would and take coding classes.
50	* SinisterSpyAgency: This film has an example of "NSA Evil", or at least "NSA is {{Jerkass}}". It's not only revealed that they have a system that can reconstruct any apparently erased database named "Black Widow" (which is the device that put Hathaway in jail), but the agent who is Barrett's contact within it makes clear (in the most deadpan tone ever) he would rather let Sadak (a hacker who considers ''nuclear terrorism and demolishing trade markets'' simple "test runs" to his schemes) to remain free before allowing the Chinese any glimpses of America's info-warfare capabilities.
51	* SWATTeam: The [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous Special Duties Unit]] is brought in to help the good guys after a [=OCTB=] team gets wiped out by Kassar's men. [[CombatPragmatist They also ambush them in the storm drains by using mines to take them out.]]
52	* TakeThat: Nicholas ends up [[spoiler: hacking the NSA.]] ''Big-time'' CatharsisFactor, after the recent scandals and controversies.
53	* TrialRunCrime: Sadak turned a Chinese nuclear reactor into Chernobyl Two just to see if his worm would affect a specific type of computer-controlled water pump to manipulate the tin market.
54	* ViewerFriendlyInterface: Some extra elements were added for the viewer's benefit. For example, a scene where Nicholas issues a copy command from the command-line pops up a graphic (the command normally doesn't display anything).

Context Film / Blackhat