Hackers (1995)

HACK THE PLANET!

Thirty years ago, that was the catchphrase for a high-energy youth culture movie focusing on a diverse crew of good-looking, well-dressed, "teenage" hackers in New York City.  All these kids wanna do via modems and computers is to have fun....until they discover a criminal conspiracy with plans to use a computer virus which eventually result in an ecological disaster.  Directed by Iain Softely (Backbeat, K-Pax, The Skeleton Key), this techno-fueled romp eventually became a cult classic powered by its danceable soundtrack (Massive Attack, Prodigy, Orbital) and its cast of up-and-comers including Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Laurence Mason, and Matthew Lillard.  So let's rewind back to a specific time AND place....when the only options available for enterprising youth....were to Boot Up or Shut Up!

Host: Geoff Gershon
Edited By Ella Gershon
Producer: Marlene Gershon

Transcript

HACKERS – Directed by Iain Softley - 1995

Starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Matthew Lillard, Fisher Stevens, Jesse Bradford, Renoly Santiago, Laurence Mason, Lorraine Bracco, Penn Jillette, Michael Gaston, Marc Anthony, Alberta Watson, and Wendell Pierce

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller (Audio clip)

There's no way around it....this movie is genuinely stupid. It tries SO hard to be a trend-setting youth culture movie while having such little actual understanding as to how computers or modems work. It features some genuinely bad performances including both the main lead (Johnny Lee Miller trying to do some kind of accent I can't quite nail down) AND the main villain played by Fisher "The Plague" Stevens who might be in on the joke? 🤔 And neither of them are even giving THE worst performance here…..nope I’ll get to that actress in just a a bit. 

Delivering a thankless yet better performance, Wendell Pearce gets to play the imposing secret service agent leading the charge on attempting to smoke out and arrest out titular "teenage" hackers and I swear....he has to be delivering the SAME EXACT schpiel to a different reporter about the dangers of hackers at least four different times throughout this movie?? 😆 Maybe he's in on the joke? Maybe they ALL are? (I mean Fisher's character enters every room on a skateboard) And MAYBE that's part of this film's charm, maybe that's why I just can't look away.... 

Almost thirty years after this first hit theaters amidst a glut of absurdly executed, immediately dated wanna-be-techno-thrillers (The Net, Virtuosity, Johnny Pneumonic, Disclosure) and ONE genuinely good one (Strange Days which had the dubious honor of coming out last), I have always just found this one so utterly rewatchable! It's for a variety of reasons....I still LOVE the wall-to-wall Electronica filling the soundtrack from the best acts out there at the time including Orbital, Leftfield, and Underworld. The beats are fast and that camera is always trying to keep up....British director Iain Softley (Backbeat, Wings of the Dove) was clearly trying to be Danny Boyle before Boyle even became a thing....or maybe Danny just market-corrected him with a more fine-tuned version of this extended music video style? No matter because here as we see various two-bit computer graphic images floating around Miller's face as his Dade is furiously pounding away on that keyboard....get it, he's HACKING....it feels silly on the surface but it's still watchable....

The costumes are nutty and the constant roller-blading is incessant but at least some of the cast seems to have fun selling it with aplomb, most notably Lawrence Mason (The Crow, The Lincoln Lawyer) as Nikon and Matthew Lillard as Cereal....honestly just playing a more anarchic though less homicidal version of his iconic Stuart character in Scream the following year. 🤫 It's also nice to see these kids marauding around real mid '90's Manhattan locations, even if every place they go ends up resembling a Foot Clan hangout out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles....just with more computers on-hand. Regardless the movie has a style and energy which can be disarming if you're open to it....

Overall, this still kinda works as a full-on guilty pleasure of a time capsule movie even though it doesn't QUITE capture the ins-and-outs of actual computer hacking. I mean to be fair....if you went to a disco in the mid '70's, did any one on the dance floor look or move REMOTELY like Tony Manero? 🫣 Of course not....movies ARE a visual medium and movies like this are trying a BIT to be aspirational right? To a point of course...there's one scene early in the movie when some of our favorite characters are just going ga-ga for a screen-saver (!) - nobody would fault you for rolling your eyes at such a thing.

Best Needledrop (best song cue or score used throughout runtime of film): 

Now back to that soundtrack….yeah this was definitely my sweet spot in ’95 as I just LOVED techno and this film’s soundscape is wall-to-wall with some of the best acts from this era which go right in line with the subject matter as well.  And wouldn’t you know it, my favorite act from this era – actually still one of my favorite bands of all time – Orbital provides a catchy track to kick off the movie during the opening credits as our hero Dade is flying into New York City where he is relocating with his mother.  It’s admittedly a bit strange as it seems at one point as if his plane is flying right ALONGSIDE Manhattan island but no matter….this song was an early breakout single for the Hartnoll brothers from Kent, England – Paul & Phil – from their ’93 album officially titled “Orbital 2” but unofficially referred to as “The Brown Album.”  It’s a lovely bouncy track which just defines the description “intelligent ambience” which was coined by one music critic at the time – filled with sweeping female vocals, this one remains a true banger, I’m referring to “Halcyon On and On.” (Audio clip) 

Wasted Talent (most under-utilized talent involved with film): 

So who gives the WORST performance here?  Well that honor goes to Oscar-nominee Lorraine Bracco who plays Margo, an underhanded corporate executive who’s in cahoots with Fisher’s The Plague.  She’s enveloped in this brash hacking enterprise with him even though she has ZERO knowledge of anything computer-related.  What results is her character saddled with thankless dialogue like the following....

"Rabbit, flu shot....someone TAWK to me!" 

I can't tell if it's her delivery of such lines, badly done ADR, or some combination of both but Bracco just looks embarrassed to be here. (Audio clip) 

Trailer Moment (scene or moment that best describes this movie):

What else could it be but the actual climax of this film?  Our intrepid gang of hackers is DESPERATELY trying to find a so-called “garbage file” which contains proof of The Plague’s conspiracy….but he’s got a Gibson armed with LOADS of security so how they can take him on??  Well by going to Grand Central Station of course - an EXTREMELY public place – so that they can use the payphones there to get connected?? Um sure….well at least it’s a cool-looking place for them to hang out and there ARE several banks of pay phones there. (Audio clip) 

But they can’t do it alone so they enlist help from the co-hosts of a local public access show ABOUT hacking – named Razor and Blade (I shit you not)– spread the word around to their fellow hackers ALL around the world to ALSO attack that Gibson mainframe.  And what results is an admittedly goofy but VERY fun montage of folks from ALL over the planet with their laptops and brick phones AND probably this film’s most inspired visual flourish.  We see the camera spinning around each of our gang in their phone booths armed with head-sets just hacking away….with a dissolve of the digital skyline of mainframe behind them…..TOWERS, hey it’s one way to visualize things. (Audio clip)   

Just a go-for-broke sequence and whether you buy it or not, it’s clear that the director is having some fun with this material so I can’t fault him…..oh and there’s a very catchy, guitar-driven piece of instrumental music playing over it, a collaboration between two LEGENDARY guitarists David Gilmour and Spencer Pratt, the track is fittingly called, “Grand Central Station.” (Audio clip) 

MVP (person or people most responsible for the success of this film):

And then finally there's JOLIE. 🙃 Yup you were probably wondering when I was gonna mention her.  This was my big-screen introduction to the allure of then 20-year-old Angelina Jolie....and I was admittedly smitten. Hey I was ALSO 20 when this came out. (As if I had a chance! 😆) Her Kate (also a hacker) just DOMINATES the screen as soon as she appears...even if her character is just inexplicably always angry at first. I’m still fairly confident that she's giving one of the better performances here as she does seem to have a handle on the techno-speak and convincingly become the gang's leader by the third act. Not gonna lie though....the eyes, the hockey jersey, the confident strut, the close-cropped hair, those lips of course....it was all (and still is) very appealing! No doubt it's a very strong, star-making debut and for somewhat carrying this film especially during the second half, Angelina Jolie is the MVP. (Audio clip) 

Final Rating: 2.9 stars out of 5 

Happy 30th Anniversary to one of the more inexplicably entertaining cult films of the ‘90’s, oh and just a reminder….HACK THE PLANET!!!!

Streaming on crunchyroll 

And that ends another CRASH AND BURN review!