“If it isn’t Leopard Boy and the Decepticons.”
What’s it all about? Eleven-year-old Dade Murphy is arrested for creating a computer virus that caused a single-day seven-point drop in the New York Stock Exchange. His sentence is a $45,000 fine and ban from owning or operating computers (or touch-tone telephones) until his eighteenth birthday. HACKERS stars Jonny Lee Miller as the eighteen-year-old Dade Murphy, and Angelina Jolie as Kate Libby.
Upon turning eighteen, Dade “Zero Cool” Murphy hacks into a television network to change its programming from some talk show to THE OUTER LIMITS. Of course I fell in love immediately. It also helped that Dade is portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller, my favourite Jane Austen leading male. (Mr. Knightley trumps Mr. Darcy every time.) In HACKERS, Jonny is billed opposite Angelina Jolie, who plays the short-haired, bad-tempered and popular Kate. They hate each other from the get-go, but that’s probably because Kate is intimidated by Dade’s bleached-blonde good looks and killer video game skills. Kate is revealed to be Acid Burn, another hacker, and she and Dade keep up a rivalry that manifests itself as an escalating series of dares. Cross-dressing is involved.
Dade befriends a group of hackers that includes Acid Burn, The Phantom Phreak (Renoly Santiago), Cereal Killer (Matthew Lillard) and Lord Nikon (Laurence Mason). There’s also a novice hacker that tags along named Joey Pardella (Jesse Bradford) who breaks into the Ellingson Mineral Company supercomputer to prove to the group that he is “elite” like the rest of them. But Joey’s not as good as Dade and he gets caught within minutes — but not before stealing a disk of top-secret data! The Ellingson Mineral Company brings this problem to an expert in computer systems security named Eugene “The Plague” Belford (Fisher Stevens). The Plague, the film’s skateboard-riding villain, attempts to enlist Dade to betray his friends and work as a “keyboard cowboy” to uncover the missing disk of data. When Dade refuses, The Plague breaks Dade’s boombox as an act of intimidation. Oh, it’s on!
Here’s a little taste of what you’re in for with HACKERS — A scientist wears a Power Glove! Everyone carries their rollerblades slung over their shoulders like preppies would pastel cardigans. No one actually walks; It’s all roller-blading. Jonny Lee Miller wears a skin-tight red leather outfit in a dream sequence. Visual depictions of the Internet are not unlike those in JOHNNY MNEMONIC. SWAT teams with machine guns and helicopters break into houses to arrest children. An underground television show about hacking is hosted by two effeminate Asian men with Geisha makeup. There’s really dramatic sequences where people just stare at computer screens and type on keyboards! Everything is electronic dance music!
The 90s were the best.
Notes: Directed by Iain Softley; Produced by Michael Peyser; Written by Rafael Moreu; Starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, Fisher Stevens, Renoly Santiago, Laurence Mason; Music by Simon Boswell; Cinematography by Andrzej Sekuła; Editing by Chris Blunden, Martin Walsh.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Hack the Gibson!!!
Man, this is one of my favorite movies growing up in the 1990s. It’s where I discovered Angie and man, she became huge.
During a screening of “Happy Endings” that I attended, Jesse Bradford did a Q&A and I told him “Hackers was awesome” and he said “Thank you” and I got his autograph. That was fucking awesome.
Man everything about the 90′s was good, hot damn. Glad you got to see this since it features your man so prominently! I forgot Jesse Bradford was in it, and Fisher Stevens, for some reason a go-to villain of the 90s? Better than brownfacing it up for laughs in SHORT CIRCUIT I guess.
Also I love that Angelina Jolie has, like… sideburns. Hehe.
This film can do no wrong in my opinion…okay the villain was a bit weak, but otherwise I still get a kick out of this film. The cheesy aspects, which are many, only enhance the film’s overall charm.
There are a lot of scenes where it’s like EXTENDED SCENE WHERE JONNY LOOKS AT COMPUTER. But I don’t care. All the rollerblading! The blonde hair! It’s AMAZING. And yes, the villain is a bit weak, but it’s alright in my books.
What I remember about this film is:
1. Thinking Angie looked and seemed kinda odd.
2. I was gutted there wasn’t more rollerblading.
3. Voodoo People was awesome at the start.
I’ve seen this movie multiple times. It was the first one I ever saw Angelina Jolie in. The mother had a line that pretty much sums up Jolie: When she opens the door and sees the girl who’s been distracting her son she says, “Now I see what all the fuss is about.” Jolie just cooly accepts the compliment. Gotta love that Romulan haircut that Jolie is sporting in the film.
I watched it many years later and some of the “cool computer dialogue” comes across as really dated and hokey, but that happens with pretty much any movie about computers.