This week, it was quite surprising that only 1 major movie premiered in Indonesia which was xXx: Return of Xander Cage and I already saw and reviewed it earlier. There were actually 2 or 3 other movies that premiered on Friday in Jakarta but I decided to watch this one on my Saturday. I went to Cinemaxx Plaza Semanggi around 11.30AM and just I predicted, the cinema was packed with a lot of people. Reason was Cinemaxx theater was having free tickets giveaway unconditionally to audience only for the shows before 3 PM. I was actually waiting for my wife to complete her food tasting event but she told me she would not be able to make it for the 2.30PM show. So I took 1 free ticket for myself and I was really grateful for Cinemaxx for having this wonderful giveaway.
Brief Story Line
Alex (Callan McAuliffe - I Am Number Four, The Great Gatsby etc) was a high school graduate who came from a Ukrainian immigrant family while he was still very young. With no proper expertise, his father had been unemployed since they moved to Canada and they had to rely on Alex' mother's small salary from her work at a bank. Alex spent most of his childhood time in front of his mother's computer and learnt to do few things in his computer. He was very adamant that he should go to college to learn computer programming. Using his little knowledge of making money from the internet, he was able to do "work" and start saving money little by little.
Unfortunately for Alex, when he was almost finishing his high school and saved enough money, his mother was fired from her work at the bank, leaving Alex no choice but to give up all his money for his mother to continue paying for the mortgage of their house. He saw in the news which was shown all over the TV and internet that some hackers who called themselves Dark Web had been doing cyber attacks on the business world. Alex was interested and start to introduce himself to this group with the hope of someday meeting with their leader named Zed and of course to learn how to get big money fast. Alex managed to do illegal business from this internet with the help from Dark Web and gained quite large amount of money that he was able to continue going to college.
Alex left his parents and went to college in another city, but there would be few months before the semester start. So he decided to use his free time to gain some more easy money. While trying to sell some watches in Chinatown, he came across with a soon to be his best buddy Sye (Daniel Eric Gold - Charlie Wilson's War, Definitely Maybe etc) who introduced him to the world of scheming, conning and illegal stuffs.
Alex still interested in seeing Zed and doing bigger things especially that could hurt the banking institution as he was so disappointed with the bank that fired his mother and left them with so much liabilities. After done with something quite big, he started to be noticed by Dark Web and a girl named Kira (Lorraine Nicholson - World's Greatest Dad, Soul Surfer etc) who wanted to know him better. She seemed to know about lots of ways to make more money through the internet & credit card scheming so Sye asked Alex to see if Kira wanted to join them, which she accepted.
So now the three of them started to do some heists together. During 1 of their heist, Alex and Sye did something to offend a Colombian cartel boss which would later have major impact in their lives. In addition, Sye started to feel that Alex trusted Kira more then him. Not to mention he felt suspicious with Kira's ability to always find major buyer for their items, which Alex always felt that it was because of Sye's jealousy. After an unsuccessful attempt on selling their biggest items yet, they offended a mafia boss and decided to run away to Hong Kong (as suggested by Kira) where supposedly good for hackers and also where Zed likely lived.
Could Alex continue his quest of doing big job that would make him meet Zed? What was Kira's actual motive and whether Sye's suspicion valid? What would happen to Alex, Kira and Zed's relationship? You will found them soon enough.
End of Brief Story Line
Well I was thinking that I would be seeing a movie with lots of hacking done throughout the movie (as per the title suggested), but instead we would be shown only few scenes of the actual hacking done. Majority of the movie was actually more on the heist and scheming done by the three main characters where the hacking was shown only very little in the background. The scheming itself was actually shown quite nicely and quite easy to understand. My guess was if the movie title was not "Hacker", audience may not be expecting this sort of stuff in the movie. In fact, the film was having another title called "Anonymous" which was coincidentally the name of a very famous (notorious?) hacktivist group. Even the poster seemed to suggest it. Perhaps for popularity purpose?
Anyway, as I said earlier, the hacking activity was not that much. You would definitely see them more in the popular TV series Mr. Robot that I had reviewed earlier. Now having watched that series I could not help but compare it with the movie. For those who have watched the TV series and enjoyed the hacking scenes and also the psychological thriller scenes involving the main character, then for your sure you would not like this movie at all as it would be considered very shallow to that one. However, if you are actually not a fan of too much serious deep thinking, then this might be more enjoyable to you.
By the way, as an independent movie without overthinking about the fact not a lot of hacking scenes, the movie itself actually had some nice moments. The attraction was the relationship between Alex with Sye and the interruption with the inclusion of new girl Kira. It was a classic bromance interfered with a woman. Among these 3 characters, I kind of rooted for Sye and could understand his frustration. There were not a lot of action or special effects as it was more like a thriller drama. The movie was told in a flashback kind of model where it started with the important moment then move back to the Alex storyline where we would reach the start of the movie.
My biggest flaw in this movie was not the lack of those hacking scenes, but it was more on the lousy ending. It was truly a WTH kind of ending that really did not serve the purpose of the movie. I am sorry but I could not find any satisfaction on the ending of this movie. It was like the writers really did not care anymore whether the ending would give closure or understanding. I know that people like ending that sometime made you think and conclude by yourself, but again this one sucks big time, at least according to me.
So if you are interested in seeing the movie like I shared above and you are willing to take the risk of seeing such ending, then by all means you can definitely try and watch it. But if you are interested in seeing more deep analytical thinking film, then I would recommend you see Mr. Robot TV series. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Unfortunately for Alex, when he was almost finishing his high school and saved enough money, his mother was fired from her work at the bank, leaving Alex no choice but to give up all his money for his mother to continue paying for the mortgage of their house. He saw in the news which was shown all over the TV and internet that some hackers who called themselves Dark Web had been doing cyber attacks on the business world. Alex was interested and start to introduce himself to this group with the hope of someday meeting with their leader named Zed and of course to learn how to get big money fast. Alex managed to do illegal business from this internet with the help from Dark Web and gained quite large amount of money that he was able to continue going to college.
Alex left his parents and went to college in another city, but there would be few months before the semester start. So he decided to use his free time to gain some more easy money. While trying to sell some watches in Chinatown, he came across with a soon to be his best buddy Sye (Daniel Eric Gold - Charlie Wilson's War, Definitely Maybe etc) who introduced him to the world of scheming, conning and illegal stuffs.
Alex still interested in seeing Zed and doing bigger things especially that could hurt the banking institution as he was so disappointed with the bank that fired his mother and left them with so much liabilities. After done with something quite big, he started to be noticed by Dark Web and a girl named Kira (Lorraine Nicholson - World's Greatest Dad, Soul Surfer etc) who wanted to know him better. She seemed to know about lots of ways to make more money through the internet & credit card scheming so Sye asked Alex to see if Kira wanted to join them, which she accepted.
So now the three of them started to do some heists together. During 1 of their heist, Alex and Sye did something to offend a Colombian cartel boss which would later have major impact in their lives. In addition, Sye started to feel that Alex trusted Kira more then him. Not to mention he felt suspicious with Kira's ability to always find major buyer for their items, which Alex always felt that it was because of Sye's jealousy. After an unsuccessful attempt on selling their biggest items yet, they offended a mafia boss and decided to run away to Hong Kong (as suggested by Kira) where supposedly good for hackers and also where Zed likely lived.
Could Alex continue his quest of doing big job that would make him meet Zed? What was Kira's actual motive and whether Sye's suspicion valid? What would happen to Alex, Kira and Zed's relationship? You will found them soon enough.
End of Brief Story Line
Well I was thinking that I would be seeing a movie with lots of hacking done throughout the movie (as per the title suggested), but instead we would be shown only few scenes of the actual hacking done. Majority of the movie was actually more on the heist and scheming done by the three main characters where the hacking was shown only very little in the background. The scheming itself was actually shown quite nicely and quite easy to understand. My guess was if the movie title was not "Hacker", audience may not be expecting this sort of stuff in the movie. In fact, the film was having another title called "Anonymous" which was coincidentally the name of a very famous (notorious?) hacktivist group. Even the poster seemed to suggest it. Perhaps for popularity purpose?
Anyway, as I said earlier, the hacking activity was not that much. You would definitely see them more in the popular TV series Mr. Robot that I had reviewed earlier. Now having watched that series I could not help but compare it with the movie. For those who have watched the TV series and enjoyed the hacking scenes and also the psychological thriller scenes involving the main character, then for your sure you would not like this movie at all as it would be considered very shallow to that one. However, if you are actually not a fan of too much serious deep thinking, then this might be more enjoyable to you.
By the way, as an independent movie without overthinking about the fact not a lot of hacking scenes, the movie itself actually had some nice moments. The attraction was the relationship between Alex with Sye and the interruption with the inclusion of new girl Kira. It was a classic bromance interfered with a woman. Among these 3 characters, I kind of rooted for Sye and could understand his frustration. There were not a lot of action or special effects as it was more like a thriller drama. The movie was told in a flashback kind of model where it started with the important moment then move back to the Alex storyline where we would reach the start of the movie.
My biggest flaw in this movie was not the lack of those hacking scenes, but it was more on the lousy ending. It was truly a WTH kind of ending that really did not serve the purpose of the movie. I am sorry but I could not find any satisfaction on the ending of this movie. It was like the writers really did not care anymore whether the ending would give closure or understanding. I know that people like ending that sometime made you think and conclude by yourself, but again this one sucks big time, at least according to me.
So if you are interested in seeing the movie like I shared above and you are willing to take the risk of seeing such ending, then by all means you can definitely try and watch it. But if you are interested in seeing more deep analytical thinking film, then I would recommend you see Mr. Robot TV series. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
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