THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509160044
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
IN THE LATEST belabored effort to make a movie out of the information superhighway phenomenon, there is a frantic, MTV-style thing called ``Hackers.'' It's all about a group of cyberpunks who specialize in breaking into other folks' info systems.
It has bright colors, a cast of lookers apparently recruited from modeling agencies and lots of incoherent mumbo jumbo that passes as ``computer talk.''
When you look beyond all the visuals, it's pretty dull.
The task of making a thriller based on the computer craze is not easy. There was a time when the showdown in movies involved who was the fastest draw. The shootout on main street has been replaced by a typing challenge.
The hero of ``Hackers'' is Dade, played by British actor Jonny Lee Miller, who does more posing than acting. He's the James Dean character, the outsider trying to be ``in'' with the local delinquents. At age 11, Dade proved what a computer whiz he was by crashing 1,507 computers on Wall Street and sending the stock market crashing. His sentence was simply not to get near a computer, or even a touch-tone telephone, until age 18.
Lorraine Bracco, keeping the tough accent she has in all her roles , is Mom, who buys him a computer on his 18th birthday. She urges him to stop taking over a TV network and come to dinner.
His handle is Zero Cool and he clashes with a punk girl called Acid Burn in a video showdown at a club called Cyberdelia. Love must blossom after this.
But did anyone notice that these playful ``heroes'' just happen to be criminals? Initially, they merely change their grades or turn on the school's sprinkler system (even though most of them look too old for high school). They're interested, though, in changing credit ratings or pushing bootleg tapes via the Internet. These are the good guys?
There is a feeble effort to introduce something resembling a plot. It has Fisher Stevens going over the top as The Plague, an evil big-business type who tries to frame the hackers. Stevens wants the hackers to take the blame for the fact that he's stealing funds from an oil company, and plans to run all the oil-filled ships aground. Stevens goes wild with the part, and almost gets us interested.
The leading lady, done up to look like someone from outer space, is played by Jon Voight's daughter, Angelina Jolie. Her idea of playing cool is to be totally aloof to everything - especially the script.
There's a lot of incomprehensible computer jargon, which is likely to be outdated by Tuesday.
The producers claim that it is ``a wake-up call for the Nintendo generation.'' Perhaps so. It is true that it is impossible to nap during ``Hackers.'' There are too many bright lights, and too much noise. It all, though, signifies nothing. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Hackers''
Cast: Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Fisher Stevens, Lorraine
Bracco, Jesse Bradford
Director: Ian Softley
Screenplay: Rafael Moreu
MPAA rating: PG-13 (language, some semi-nudity, could well have
been an R)
Mal's rating: One 1/2 stars
Locations: Movies 10 and Greenbrier 13 in Chesapeake; Circle 4
and Main Gate in Norfolk; Kemps River, Lynnhaven Mall, Pembroke and
Surf-n-Sand in Virginia Beach.
by CNB