Hackers

Oscar-winning Actress, Movie Star, Director, Humanitarian, Commercial Spokeswoman, International Sex Symbol, Bizarre Tattoo Advocate, Culturally Diverse Adoption Wild Child, one of the most recognised celebrities on the planet, it's the one and only Angelina Jolie. Whatever you think about her, there's is no doubt that here professional and personal life (mainly the latter) has had, and continues to have a huge impact on contemporary culture. When was the last time you seen a Woman's Interest magazine that didn't have her on the cover? Yes, she's been through 2 failed marriages, yes she's covered in nonsensical inkwork, yes she has a thing for 3rd world adoption, yes her weight is up and down like Tiger Wood's trousers, but one thing that cannot be taken away from her is her acting talent, and that's what I'm going to celebrate this month. I'm going to review 4 Angelina Jolie movies, beginning with one of here first forays into cinema, Hackers.

Directed by Iain Softley (K-PAX, The Skeleton Key) and released in 1995, Hackers stars Johnny Lee Miller, Matthew Lillard, Renoly Santiago, Laurence Mason and Fisher Stephens alongside Miss Jolie. It concerns, if you hadn't guessed from the title, computer hackers, who become embroiled in a corporate extortion conspiracy, a dilemma that I'm sure many hackers round the world face everyday. Visually it's impressive, in other categories, it leaves a bit to be desired. But lets not jump the gun, let's have look.

The film opens in 1988, where Dade Murphy (Miller), under his hacker alias Zero Cool, crashes 1,507 computers and buggers up the new York Stock Exchange. As a result, he is baned from using computers until his 18th Birthday.

Cut to, coincidentally, Dade's 18th birthday, where, having apparently not learned his lesson, he hacks into a computer network. Unfortunately, another hacker know as Acid Burn is hacking into the exact same network. After giving himself a new handle, Crash Overrride, Acid Burn cuts him out.

After enrolling at his new school he meets the smoking hot Kate Libby (Jolie of course), who turns out to be Acid Burn. Upon revealing that he is Crash Override, they begin to argue over who is the superior hacker. To determine who is truly the nerd of the century they have a computer hacking contest. Yes, I'm dead serious. Their 'assignment' is to make life a pain in the neck for a US Secret Service Agent called Richard Gill, who arrested one of their friends called Joey, who hacked into a Gibson Supercomputer to prove he was 'elite'. The judges of this computer duel are The Phreak (Santiago), who's a weirdo, Cereal (Lillard), who's an idiot, and Nikon (Mason), who, kinda looks like Ving Rhames. In fact, when I first saw the film, I though it really WAS Ving Rhames.

Moving on, Dade and Kate decide to unite and find out the truth behind Joey's arrest and the disk which he used to copy files onto from the Gibson, forgetting that, you know, they hate each other, and were engaged in a head-to-head technobattle just a few days ago.

The story after this is pretty difficult to follow. It helps if you know a little computer jargon, but even then you'll feel pretty lost. The group are essentially fighting a guy called The Plague (Stephens), who is planning to extort millions of dollars from an oil company, plant a virus in the system and then attempt to blame the whole thing on the hackers. I guess it's more interesting than trying to take over the world.

If you've never seen his movie, then you're not really missing much. It's not one of those 'make a point of watching it' kind of films. The plot is messy and at times downright ridiculous, the dialogue is cheesy, the villain is lame, and the characters are pretty generic. With that aside, the visuals are, at times, really damn good. Sometimes the movie will actually give us the impression that we've entered a computer, and this is where the film stands out the most. Clearly more effort was spent on giving that technology a visual style all to itself. Seeing the interactive elements within the machines almost makes it seem like an organic life form.

When all is said and done, it's not a great movie. in fact in a lots of regards it's not even a good movie. But as a piece of pure aesthetics, it's a nice little piece.