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The interconnectivity of everything we do ameliorates so many things in society and brings the whole world together. That linkage comes with a price, however, as cyberterrorism is now an undeniable part of existence that isn’t going away.

Michael Mann explores that truth in Blackhat (2015), showing that skilled hackers don’t just steal customer information from Target or shut down the Playstation Network for a couple days - they can cause meltdowns of nuclear reactors, influence the stock market, or (literally) open the floodgates for natural disasters.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mann said, “It’s almost like there’s an invisible kind of exoskeleton above the layer in which we think our lives take place on planet Earth, that’s made up of interconnectedness and data.We’re swimming around in it, and everything is totally porous, vulnerable and accessible. And if it hasn’t been targeted, that’s only because somebody hasn’t bothered to yet.”

The movie isn’t so much about hacking as it is about the effects hacking can have on everyday life. Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com makes a good observation (while sufficiently quoting the late Ebert):

“Slick and sometimes goofy as it is, “Blackhat” is an odd, fascinating movie: a high-tech action thriller about the human condition. I can think of no better current illustration of the notion that, to quote this site’s founder, it’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it’s about it.”

He continues,

““Blackhat” is mainly about what happens when the real world is annexed by the virtual: what it does to geography and relationships… The film’s prologue is the best example of virtual treachery causing actual mayhem. It’s a gem of wordless exposition that finds a visual/metaphorical way to explain how hackers slip past electronic firewalls and spread a malware virus into nuclear plant’s computer system, shutting off cooling fans and causing core rods to overheat. You don’t have to know much about computers to understand what’s happening. You can figure it out by watching CGI images of pulsing dots swimming through fiber-optic cables and circuit boards (in point-of-view shots that evoke a Stalker Cam in a horror film or the shark in “Jaws”), then spreading and multiplying like cancer cells.”

A different evaluation from The New York Times also offers a poignant examination of the theme, after calling out that Hemsworth’s character is reading a Michel Foucault book in prison during his first scene.

“The movie’s suppositions — namely that the world is now a surveillance penitentiary — emerge clearly enough that you don’t need these intellectual signposts, even if name-dropping philosophers has long been par for the cinematic course for the likes of, say, Jean-Luc Godard. Yet such allusions are of a piece with Mr. Mann’s singular hybrid approach, which exists at the crossroads of the classical Hollywood cinema and the European art film and is evident in his oscillation between action and introspection, transformation and stasis, exterior and interior realms.”

As a society, high-level hacking is something we don’t understand. It’s like space travel or string theory. We (the masses) know it’s a thing, but our knowledge doesn’t even scratch the surface of that of its participants. But hacking can impact anyone who spends any amount of time online. The film isn’t doesn’t take that fact and run with the fear factor, but it does awaken one to the gravity of possibilities that exist within the wheelhouse of a top-tier hacker.