Blackhat
Universal Pictures | Release Date: January 16, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
11
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzJan 14, 2015
Slick and sometimes goofy as it is, Blackhat is an odd, fascinating movie: a high-tech action thriller about the human condition. I can think of no better current illustration of the notion that, to quote this site's founder, it's not what a movie is about, it's how it's about it. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoJan 13, 2015
Michael Mann's camera elegantly collapses the spaces between bodies and objects without sacrificing spatial coherence. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyJan 15, 2015
Mann’s first feature in nearly six years, the hacking thriller Blackhat is rough even by the standards of its director’s current creative period. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJan 14, 2015
Blackhat is a meticulous and exacting procedural, as obsessive with its hunt for its intangible antagonist as Mann’s compulsive desire to appreciate the flow of 1s and 0s in the virtual space. It’s chockablock with technobabble and jargon that may alienate the average viewer, but Mann’s secret weapon is his infectious fascination with the subject. The movie is like a conductive surface for his unmitigated zeal, and its potency is viral. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinFeb 19, 2015
Only Michael Mann could have made it. And thank goodness he did. Read full review
80
CineVue Craig WilliamsFeb 18, 2015
Blackhat is about the contraflow; it's a disruption in the new technocracy and a fly in the ointment of big budget Hollywood cinema. Read full review
80
Total FilmJamie GrahamFeb 17, 2015
It’s no "Heat" but the niggles are easily forgiven given the virtuosity on show and the mood oozing from every frame. No one shoots faces, architecture and gunfights like Mann. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla DargisJan 15, 2015
Michael Mann’s thriller Blackhat, a story about the intersection of bodies and machines, is a spectacular work of unhinged moviemaking. By turns brutal and sentimental, lovely and lurid, as serious as the grave and blissfully preposterous, it combines a truckload of plot with many of the obsessions, tropes, sights and sounds that distinguish his other movies. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJan 14, 2015
Unlike most directors, style is hardly a side dish with Michael Mann—it’s the main entrée. No one captures city lights at night or luxury cars slinking down the highway like the creator of Miami Vice, and his conversion to digital video continues to yield breathtaking results. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeJan 13, 2015
The film is a snarl of contradictions, starting with the discrepancy between Mann’s obsessive demand for realism and the consistently implausible screenplay. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 15, 2015
Despite being overlong, Blackhat is mostly engaging. The narrative features one major change of direction and things get increasingly preposterous as the climax approaches, but that's not unusual in this genre. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversJan 15, 2015
Best of all is the excitement of watching Mann use his kinetic powers as a filmmaker to tackle the new face of 21st-century warfare. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianJeff BakerJan 15, 2015
The camera tricks, the pacing, and the superbly choreographed set pieces are all there, in the right order, primed and timed like a string of fireworks. But what's holding Blackhat together is a dopey, ham-fisted script that plays like it's plucked from the bottom of the James Bond slush pile. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranJan 15, 2015
Technology may have changed, cyber-crime may be all the rage, but the narrative song remains the same in films like this, and it's a tune this director knows by heart. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenJan 13, 2015
At its best, the movie achieves a broody dazzle, even as the narrative proves less memorable than one would have hoped. But the fluency of Mann’s direction and the slow-burn chemistry between Chris Hemsworth and Tang Wei counterbalance the more ordinary, and not always involving, procedural elements. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle SmithJan 15, 2015
This Michael Mann-directed film is full of Michael Mann-isms, many of them familiar from, and done better in, “Heat.” Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 15, 2015
A thickly plotted disappointment, yet it has three or four big sequences proving that director Michael Mann, who gave us "Thief," "Heat," "Collateral" and others, has lost none of his instincts for how to choreograph, photograph and edit screen violence. Read full review
60
EmpireJames DyerFeb 17, 2015
A competent procedural rather than the ground-breaking cybersaga we’d hoped for. But as with Miami Vice, Mann’s boundless style does a remarkable job of disguising the lack of substance. Read full review
60
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekJan 13, 2015
There’s visual thinking everywhere you look in Blackhat, which is great until you realize that it’s bled into a kind of overthinking — the movie is too much of a good thing, an exercise that flattens any potential exhilaration or excitement into the sensation of grading a term paper. Read full review
58
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJan 16, 2015
Watching actors tap out code as big buzzing screens of digital data flash on the screen just doesn’t cut it. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaFeb 2, 2015
A moody cyber-noir with not much on its mind but looking good, Blackhat is a must-see if you like your dialogue (romantic, dramatic, subtitled Cantonese) peppered with techspeak. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJan 16, 2015
Good enough to make you wish it were better. Read full review
50
The DissolveScott TobiasJan 15, 2015
Though the pacing is lumpy, to say the least, Blackhat occasionally bursts to life when Mann breaks out one of his signature action setpieces, which have the distinct pop of heavy artillery and the immediacy of video. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJan 14, 2015
Occasionally, Mann shows flashes of the sort of springloaded action set pieces he was once hailed for, like a shoot-out during a religious parade. But mostly they just come off as warmed-over parodies from a onetime master aping his own style. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 15, 2015
Blackhat is a mess of a movie from Michael Mann, a would-be cyberthriller slowed by stupidity and sabotaged by a stunningly silly subplot. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJan 15, 2015
Unfortunately, Mann’s newest film, Blackhat, fails to connect. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleLouis BlackJan 15, 2015
Blackhat plays a surprisingly flat and ever-flatter cinema texture against the careful roll-out of an elaborate plot. Not only is the pacing deliberate, but Mann often supplies only about 80% of the information needed to understand what is going on in a scene. Read full review
40
The GuardianJordan HoffmanJan 13, 2015
Blackhat can’t decide if it is a grim, realistic story from the trenches or cyberwarfare or a giddy, “who cares if that makes sense?” Bond film. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Geoff Pevere Jan 15, 2015
Interminable techno-dud. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeTom RussoJan 15, 2015
Unfortunately, Mann also leans on ill-fitting story elements that he might easily and smartly have avoided, and the movie’s rhythms and credibility pay for it. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreJan 15, 2015
Blackhat will serve no purpose other than deflating the “Heat” director’s reputation and the star’s chances of ever starring in anything that doesn’t involve a helmet with horns on it. Read full review
38
USA TodayClaudia PuigJan 15, 2015
Blackhat is a tedious, preposterous and incoherent cyberthriller that is anything but thrilling. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 15, 2015
Blackhat is pretty much nonsense, which Mann directs with such misplaced energy and with such little natural instinct for the material that, for most of the running time, the movie’s problems seem entirely his fault. Read full review
25
HitfixDrew McWeenyJan 13, 2015
Blackhat is a staggering misfire by a whole bunch of talented people, terrible in a way that only a good filmmaker can accomplish, and it kicks off 2015 by setting the bar very, very low. Things can only get better from here. Read full review
20
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJan 15, 2015
The narrative core suffers a conspicuous meltdown, though not before Mr. Mann gets to stage a few impressive action sequences, the best and loudest of which concerns a shootout in a curvilinear tunnel. As for the climax, set against a massive torchlight parade through the streets of Jakarta, it’s very elaborate, and terribly dumb. Read full review
20
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeJan 13, 2015
Blackhat is such a massive fiasco that it’s hard to know where to begin analyzing it. Read full review
12
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJan 15, 2015
Blackhat is also one of the most visually unattractive movies I’ve ever seen. Read full review
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