It’s not an Oscar contender (that qualifying run didn’t happen), so what is "Blackhat"? Michael Mann’s latest is a crime thriller and meticulous procedural like many of his previous films (we may know someone who has seen it). According to the New York Times, the movie sounds a little eccentric in that it opens with a “nearly five-minute dramatization of code speeding through a network, shooting lights and grids, and a reverse internal shot of a keystroke.” Mann got a 3D computer model from the company Qualcomm to help visualize the sequence and make it as accurate as possible. In fact, he went to great lengths to understand the absolute fundamentals of how hacking works—which meant going back to the very, very, very basics. “What’s electricity? How does it flow? It’s not linear. How does a single transistor work? How do these chips work?” he asked himself. Suffice it to say, if you’ve heard Mann is super granular and painstaking in his approach to everything, the...
