This is a repost and (one of several) reviews of the 1995 film Hackers from writer Matt Dyjak. You can read his reviews and comments at Not Only Important, But Apocalyptic and The Hackers Movie Appreciation Blog where he continually reviews the film with a highly academic tone, giving new insights into its layered construction. It portends to be a continual deconstruction of a single piece of popular culture taken to an extreme degree. Continue reading about the film here.
——————————————
An Experimental Review of Hackers
By Matt Dyjak
Most people don’t like the movie Hackers. The teen cyberpunk film, released in 1995 and starring Jonny Lee Miller and a young Angelina Jolie, was released to no great critical acclaim, and shortly took its place among the myriad mediocre science fiction films of the 1990s.
The film tells the tale of a group of teenage hackers who unite to expose a money laundering scam; it also features a romantic subplot. The storyline, while somewhat layered, is formulaic; the characters are sexy yet one-dimensional. Also, despite its title, the film has nothing to do with actual computer hacking. In this essay I will show why none of this matters, and why I am so deeply, puzzlingly moved by the film.
We must first digress and ask what we want from films. Are we looking for realistic action with a moral message? Do we want to be entertained, regardless of plot holes, bad acting, and an insulting director? What can a film give us we couldn’t get from reading a book? What is the importance of style in cinema? The last question is crucial for my expectations. Hackers is 90% style and 10% substance.
The film’s setting, New York City, is all style. Hip youthful style. The chaos of New York; the romance of New York, of being young in the city. Here are teenagers in the city, rollerblading up and down Broadway, through Central park, always fast, fast, fast. Frenetic lives in a frenetic city. A camaraderie of youthful pranksters, staying up all night playing videogames, drinking jolt cola to the hammering of English techno. Hackers exudes this poetic techno-erotic dream of a city, a city split off from the mundane; the kids have split off a corner for themselves. In this world speed matters, volume matters, and age certainly matters. This is the setting and the structure of the film. To fully appreciate the film, you must let all of this wash over you. You must imagine being a teenager in New York City; imagine hallucinating in the street and absorbing the excessive sensations. You must dream and drift away, only here and there following the plot and character development.
The characters in this film are important. Hip, sexy, intelligent, teenage New Yorkers who share a common interest in hacking and general techno culture. They embody the exaggerated, unreal fashion of the city. The protagonist, Dade Murphy, is boyish, clean cut, and innocent; he is the archetypal hero (we won’t go into any detail about the hero’s journey or that kind of thing, but I assure you he fits the model in some way.) For most of the film, Dade goes by the alias Crash Override, but towards the end it is revealed that he used to go by the name Zero Cool. Dade’s love interest in this film, Kate Libby, is a short haired, aggressive feminist who jostles with the other guys in the group and is just as skilled. She goes by the alias Acid Burn. The other characters are considerably more generic. I’ll just list their aliases: Phantom Phreak, Lord Nikon, Cereal Killer, and a slightly younger friend named Joey. Each is representative of that dark, urban subculture fashion to which adolescents of certain artistic inclinations aspire.
And the storyline? You’ll get it the first time through. Dade, originally from Seattle, moves to New York with his mother; he leaves behind a soiled reputation and attains a new innocence among the masses of the city. Dade, with his new “computer” friends, proves himself as an “elite” and steadily pursues the seductive Kate Libby, who initially snubs him. Joey, the youngest member, seeks advice from the experienced members of the group; he then tries to impress the guys by downloading a garbage file from a mineral company. His download is interrupted, yet the computer security division of the company is able to trace and identify the hacker; Joey is shortly arrested. It turns out that the mineral company’s security officer, Eugene “the Plague” Belford, designed a worm that extracts a tiny amount of money from the company each day and dispenses it into the garbage file that Joey started to download. After accumulating a hearty fortune, the money would be transferred to an anonymous bank account where it could later be collected by Belford and his girlfriend. Belford is alarmed that the young hacker might know something about the scheme, so he designs a virus that will capsize a few oil tankers unless certain demands are met. Belford blames the virus on the hacker as a means to seize and dispose of the hacker’s equipment. Joey’s allies are revealed later in the film, and Belford uses dubious tactics to get arrest warrants for everyone. Well, in the end, the group of hackers exposes Belford’s scam, and he gets arrested; also, Dade and Kate end up dating.
Again, the plot is minimal and relatively unimportant. One of the most interesting aspects of this film is the way it represents computer hacking. When most people think about the actual process, they think of endless hours in front of a black screen, aggressively keying in commands in the hope of getting past certain security points; it’s pretty boring stuff. The director of Hackers decides to re-imagine the entire concept in a way that is more interesting and aesthetically appealing to everyone. Instead of plain text, hackers communicate in stylish and colorful images that can sometimes even talk. They move through cyberspace as if they were playing Microsoft Flight Simulator. They use their keyboards as a kind of joystick to navigate the chaotic techno-realms. The director of Hackers obviously borrows ideas from legendary science fiction author William Gibson, who coined the phrase “cyberspace” and first dreamed of its possible architecture. Here the imagination of the 90s “gamer” and the real world of computer-assisted business coincide to create a kind of dreamworld for the wired youth. The point is stamped into the viewer’s consciousness during the opening credit sequence, when the grid of New York City streets, seen from an aerial perspective, transforms into a computer chip, actively zipping information here and there. The sense of dreaminess persists throughout the entire film, and creates a sublime atmosphere that compels multiple viewings.
This film is often criticized by real hackers as silly, unrealistic, and possibly insulting to those in the actual business. They believe that the film belies their entire project by mythologizing it, and ignoring the rigorous hard work and intelligence required to navigate through the labyrinth of text. I think this is the wrong way to look at it. For one thing, the film clearly portrays hackers as smart, hip freedom fighters who, while occasionally letting their curiosity lure them into petty crime, always stand up for what is just. This approbation seems somewhat anachronistic these days, as hackers are now portrayed in the media as social deviants or even terrorists. Innocent hackers should support a movie that actually gives a positive spin on the work they do. As for the way hacking is represented, it’s much better to romanticize the process then present it as something boring and unremarkable. After all, do you want the viewer to think what you’re doing is “cool” or “interesting,” or do you want him to merely understand? Nobody who watches this movie actually thinks that hacking works in the way it is presented—unless they are very young or an idiot—but this more concrete and graphically enhanced style of the concept may still draw the interested public to explore the real thing. Also, another minor reason the director chose not to use only a text-based representation of computer hacking is that it is not sexy and the layman would fall asleep during many of the film’s pivotal scenes.
Sadly, Hackers is not a film soon to be released in the Criterion Collection. It is not a good “date” movie. It will never break the AFI’s top movies list—not even as an honorable mention. When human civilization eventually destroys itself, and our planet goes ice cold among the space dust and infinite night, we would not want Hackers to be the sole surviving human artwork recovered by an alien civilization. And yet—this seemingly trivial and campy film has a lot to offer the interested viewer, if he or she is willing to devote the time, and has an open mind.