Friday

In a third computer related movie coincidence*, I happened to watch the 1995 film Hackers, starring Jonny Lee Miller and a young Angelina Jolie. This is the same year that The Net came out, although the tone of the film is very different. Miller plays a boy who at a young age wrote a particularly virulent virus, and is subsequently banned from using a computer until he's 18. Shortly before he reaches this age, now living in a new city, he meets a group of hackers at his school, one of whom has found something suspicious amidst a large corporation's computer network. As you can guess, Miller is forced to use his superior hacking skills to come to the rescue. Aside from the new context, there's nothing very interesting here. I think I remember it being popular at the time, but of course it ceased being so very quickly. Hackers are idolised here in a way few of us have patience with any more, not to mention that the computers, clothes, culture etc of these so called cyberpunks is long since out of fashion. The visualisation of the inside of computer networks is quite fantastical, a good attempt to make computers interesting on screen, but still all that is really happening is that a character is typing on a keyboard. I found it fairly uncompelling (if that's a word). Miller is not a great actor, but Jolie does have a good presence here. It's interesting perhaps only as a piece of history, not a piece of cinema.

*There is actually a very good computer moment in It's Complicated, but I can't tell you about that.