Blackhat

Considering all of the recent headlines about hacking scandals involving major corporations, the timing is right for a big-screen tale about international cybercrime and political corruption that would be both suspenseful and provocative.

No such luck from Blackhat, a slick high-tech thriller from acclaimed director Michael Mann (The Insider) that tries to be a taut cat-and-mouse procedural and a cautionary tale about technological overreach, but fizzles both ways.

The film opens with an explosion inside a nuclear power plant in China that’s blamed on malware from an unknown perpetrator. The act is quickly linked to an online irregularity on Wall Street that leads to an inflation of commodity prices.

The team sent to investigate includes an FBI agent named Carol (Viola Davis) and a Chinese cyberterrorism expert (Wang Leehom), who convinces Carol to partner with Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), his former classmate at MIT who is serving time in prison for offenses involving both brains and brawn.

Once his freedom is negotiated, Hathaway systematically hacks into his way toward finding the responsible parties, as well as anticipating their next move — a perilous journey that takes him and his collaborators on a virtual race around the globe.

Perhaps what dooms Blackhat most is that it can’t generate much excitement from people sitting and staring at a computer screen, trying to crack classified source codes or sift through encrypted Internet forensics. The screenplay by newcomer Morgan Foehl tries to pander more to mainstream tastes with some more traditional chases and shootouts, but many of those feel muddled or misplaced, including an absurd finale in the crowded streets of Jakarta.

It ranks as a setback in the long and distinguished career of Mann, who brings his usual meticulous technical proficiency to the material but simply can’t rescue a script that is full of logical gaps, bland multicultural villains with cloudy motives, and an obligatory romantic subplot that distracts from the story. Fortunately, the filmmaker’s legacy shouldn’t be compromised too badly by this rare misfire that squanders its talent on both sides of the camera.

The film establishes some adequate tension amid its exotic locales, spreading a half-hearted message that even in today’s culture of online anonymity, there’s still a human face behind criminal activity. Yet in its effort to be cutting-edge, Blackhat feels curiously outdated.

Rated R, 133 minutes.