BLACKHAT

BLACKHAT (vt. CYBER). Michael Mann, dir., story, prod. (one of three). Morgan Davis Foehl, script. Guy Hendrix Dyas, prod. design. USA: Forward Pass, Legendary Pictures (prod.) / Universal Pictures, Universal International Pictures, Universal Pictures International (dist.),[1] 2015.

Big-budget "mundane" film (although not a huge budget by early-21st-c. standards), classified by Metacritic as "Action, Drama, Mystery, Thriller, Crime"[2], with the crime centering on a complex hacking caper that involves current-day industrial sabotage on a terrorist level, and commodities manipulation that will involve mass murder and ecological disaster. Significant here for a prolog and initial action — the sabotage of a Chinese nuclear power plant — that combines presumably computerized graphics with cinematically realistic shots of the damage inside the power plant. The effect is watching on the level of the very small as digital data move through electronic systems and fiber optics cables — a nitty-gritty vision of cyberspace — to wreak havoc in a Modern, not postmodern), Industrial setting. Cf. and contrast the original TRON (1982) and the "Bullet Cam" shot with the opening credits of LORD OF WAR (2005).[3]