On H List of Movie Reviews
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Hackers (1995)
Rate:
6
Viewed:
3/04, 3/25
3/25:
Not many people know that Angelina Jolie used to be married to Jonny Lee Miller.
Anyway, Hackers works, and I prefer it over The Net. Yeah,
the acting seems poor and a bit cheesy, but I think it's fine because they're supposed to be high school kids.
The hardest part to swallow is that a bunch of known hackers are in one place when they should be
anonymous and spread out in the United States. Nonetheless, that's a good joke in regard to the pool on the roof.
The lack of coding is the most disappointing part of the film. This isn't how hacking works. If it was that
simple, then everybody would be doing it. On the surface, the story is acceptable, but I know computer
graphics were primitive in 1995 due to low bandwidth. Remember the 3.5-inch floppy drive used
to hold 1.44 megabytes. One mere high-definition picture today won't be able to fit in that.
Two of the top games at the time were The 7th Guest and Under a Killing Moon which had to be
played on a CD-ROM drive, and yet the graphics weren't that great....just too much pixelating. But in
Hackers, everything shown is mind-blowing and quite advanced. Obviously, it's misleading to anyone
who wasn't alive or hadn't paid attention back then.
No matter how unbelievable the whole thing is, the cast isn't bad and is almost age-appropriate although the
ever-annoying Matthew Lillard can be hard to stand. Having Angelina Jolie on board helps a lot due to her
sex appeal, so the film's deficiencies can be glossed over. It's actually one of the better performances
of her career. I also like Fisher Stevens as the Plague.
All in all, although not deep, Hackers has appealing visuals and moves well.