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Dom Robinson reviews
You were wrong. Distributed by 
MGM
- Cat.no: D 057169
- Cert: 12
- Running time: 101 minutes
- Year: 1995
- Pressing: 1999
- Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 32 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.
- Subtitles: 10 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index, Trailer, Booklet
Director:
- Iain Softley
(Backbeat, The Wings of the Dove)
Producers:
- Michael Peyser and Ralph Winter
Screenplay:
- Rafael Moreu
Music:
- Simon Boswell
Cast:
- Dade Murphy: Jonny Lee Miller (Afterglow, Plunkett and Macleane, Regeneration, Trainspotting)
Kate Libby: Angelina Jolie (Cyborg 2, Foxfire, Gia, Playing God, Wallace)
Cereal: Matthew Lillard (Dead Man’s Curve, Love Sucks, Scream)
The Plague: Fisher Stevens (Nina Takes a Lover, Only You, Short Circuit 1 & 2)
Hackers takes the anti-social concept of hacking into corporate businesses and mixes it with a big dash of pop culture. Jonny Lee Miller, playing a nerdy American instead of a Scottish junkie (Trainspotting‘s Sick Boy), is Dade Murphy, aka “Zero Cool” – a kid who spends all day at school and all night in front of his PC attempting to infiltrate the big names. When he was just a little boy – age 11 to be precise – he went online and crashed 1507 systems in one day causing the biggest crash in history. A judge decreed that he could never touch another PC until his 18th birthday. Now, he has come of age.
One night he gets interrupted by someone named “Acid Burn” hacking into his system and putting on the frighteners. At the same time, while trying to fit in as the new kid in town at the local high school, his affections turn to Kate Libby (Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight’s real-life daughter), but like all the good-looking women…she’s got a boyfriend already! Now put two and two together and see how many nanoseconds it takes you to realise Kate and “Acid Burn” are one and the same.
In a bid to get the plot a stage more complicated than that which the mentally ill can manage, a master hacker who refers to himself as “The Plague” (Fisher Stevens) spots Dade et al cracking into his system – thanks to his “security guard” played by TV illusionist Penn Jillette (one half of ‘Penn and Teller’) – and frames the teenagers (okay, so the actors are really about ten years old than the characters they’re portraying but please stay with me) for a hacking crime they themselves didn’t commit which could lead to a global meltdown (thrown in for good measure, just in case you felt things weren’t over-the-top enough with computers showing big, colourful, animated, loud graphics, when small and static captions would have done well enough), after one of their friends copied a “garbage” file from The Plague’s mainframe – a file that usually contains miscellaneous rubbish but this clearly holds something more interesting.
Most of the cast do their job fine, although they’re not the most taxing roles any of them have ever had to play. However, why has director Iain Softley broken the great rule of film-making: NEVER, under any circumstances employ Lorraine Bracco at all. She can’t act to save her life and looks like an over-cooked dog’s dinner. Apart from that, she might have the occasional use in life, but I won’t divulge any further as this might be read by children under 18…
The film also has a cameo from one half of the Eurythmics, Dave Stewart as “London Hacker”.
Like Red Corner, the picture is almost flawless. Any few artefacts won’t be spotted from the usual viewing distance so it gets no complaints from me. The average bitrate is a very good 6.94Mb/s, briefly peaking over 9Mb/s and the disc is anamorphically-enhanced for widescreen televisions allowing 33% extra resolution. The film is presented in its original widescreen ratio of 2.35:1. Occasionally, it looks as if we’ve lost a little of the width with this transfer as some text gets noticeably cropped from the side of the screen. However, this must be intentional as the ratio is clearly correct and looks well-framed throughout the rest of it.
The sound quality is excellent. Dolby Digital 5.1 sound in five languages and plenty of dance and techno tunes from Orbital, Massive Attack, Prodigy, Leftfield, Underworld, Stereo MC’s and less-dancey, a love theme from Squeeze in Heaven Knows. If the neighbours aren’t banging on your walls, they’re probably dead.
Extras :
Chapters : There are 32 chapters covering the 101-minute film which serves it very well indeed. A theatrical trailer is also included in anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen.
Languages & Subtitles :
Five languages in Dolby Digital 5.1: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Plus, ten subtitled languages: English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Polish, plus the first two languages are also available in a “hard of hearing” option, which gives info about sound effects that are happening.
Booklet : An 8-page booklet which puts in print what would normally appear as production notes on the disc, as well as the usual explanation from MGM as to why widescreen is much better than a standard pan-and-scan version, depending on the way a film is shot. I wonder if this piece of information found its way onto the pan-and-scan release of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ? 🙂
Menu :
The menu is silent but starts off with some animation as the main menu options head towards you, but there’s no movement after that.
Hackers is perfect after-pub entertainment with even more cans to down. However, its longevity will be determined by how much you buy into the world of “Zero Cool” and “Acid Burn” and want to sit through a well-worn love theme.
If you do like it, then it’s worth getting if you can find it second-hand as £20 for a film and a trailer don’t add up to a hill of beans in the days when DVDs can contain stacks of extras, even for back-catalogue titles such as this.
Trivia Note: After this film, new lovers Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie tied the knot. FILM : ** PICTURE QUALITY : ***** SOUND QUALITY: ***** EXTRAS: *½ ——————————- OVERALL: ***½
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.