Hackers (1995)

Image by United Artists/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via IMDB

Hey there! Welcome to the next review! Happy May the 4th! I was going to do something special for Star Wars Day, but I wasn’t able to, so tune back in next year for that! In the meantime, enjoy the following love letter to one of my favorite movies of all time, Hackers!

What's true of today is also true of the past and true of the future. People are not only afraid of what they don't fully understand, but Hollywood will exploit those fears and make movies based on them. Case in point: Computers. Home computing has technically since 1969, with the Honeywell Kitchen Computer being the first sold to consumers, even though none were sold. It wasn't until 1977 when the first successful computers were being sold, among them the Radio Shack TRS-80, Commodore PET, and Apple II. But honestly, in the late 70s to the very early 90s, the home computer was still kind of a niche thing. The systems were expensive and not very user friendly. The people who had computers were either rich or were very into tech and didn’t mind working with code to get Zork to run properly.

 

And then came the hard part. Trying to figure out how to PLAY Zork!

Image via Flickr

There was no Internet like we know it today, but there were networks of interconnected computers and you could access them over phone lines. Usenet networks and very early versions of Internet Service Providers (ISP). But again, the people who were using it were either professionals or people who were already into tech. The mainstream public may have been aware of computers and the “Interwebz” but they didn’t know much. So of course, Hollywood takes advantage of that, making movies that show the dangers that computers bring, like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Demon Seed (1977), Tron (1982), The Terminator (1984), Hide and Seek (1984), and of course… 1983’s War Games. Where a young kid almost accidentally triggers World War III by using his home computer and hacking into a military computer system. While computer Artificial Intelligence is scary, I think most people knew we were decades away from that being an issue. But the real problem of the day? Hacking.  Because hackers were real, and they were out to get you.

 

They gonna steal yo credit cards and then smash yo computer

Image via Flickr

The hacking subculture started in the 1980s and continues to this day. If you went to a hacker convention, some of which started in the early 90s, you’d find a mix of people. Government conspiracy theorists, people wanting to steal premium cable channels, computer nerds who liked being able to access restricted servers and computers because “they can,” and you might find some malicious individuals as well. Evil Hackers do exist, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they make up the majority of “hackers” even back in the 80s and 90s.

By the mid-90s, more and more households were adopting computers and the World Wide Web. Prices had gone down on systems, user interfaces had gotten far easier to use, marketing had gotten better. You could not get real-time stock updates and news, do your finances, get recipes, look up any piece of information you desire to know about! All this information is right at the tip of your fingers. Computer gaming existed even in the old mainframe systems back at NASA, but games were now more powerful and realistic than ever. And you can play Doom and Quake with other people? Say what? Over a local network OR EVEN ONLINE?! Colleges and businesses had to implement rules and restrictions on that game because people were crashing networks and/or not doing their job or schoolwork on the computers.

 

It would only take 5 minutes for this baby to download a single porn picture from the bbs.irc service

Photo via WikiCommons

So of course, will all this, Hollywood follows suit. The second half of the 90s featured a lot of movies about Evil Technology. Johnny Mnemonic, Ghost in the Shell, Virtuosity, Strange Days. Many of them used technology and concepts that, while they might not exist in the real world, were certainly capable of being a thing in the future due to the “speed at which new technology is created.” And if we’re not morally responsible, if we don’t take our vitamins and say our prayers, we could easily end up in one of these dystopian societies. A lot of those kinds of movies are still produced today, but not so much the “Internet is Evil” kind of movie, like The Net or Hackers. As more and more people got connected to the Internet and started owning home computers and, later on, smartphones… of course, people know that hacking and identity theft and stealing of information is a real thing that happens, the odds that it’ll happen to you are slim. You just gotta be careful. But it was “unknown” enough in the 90s, that a lot of people had unnecessary fears of the internet. So movies like Hackers were made to capitalize on those fears. If only the rest of these movies were as amazing as Hackers.

 

You could roller blade everywhere you needed to go, but you aren't cool enough for that

Image by United Artists/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via IMDB

In this movie, you have a team of “good guy” anti-hero hackers, consisting of 90s heartthrob Jonny Lee Miller (who goes by the hacker names Zero Cool and Crash Override), future global mega-star Angelina Jolie (Acid Burn), MY BOY Mathew Lillard (Cereal Killer), Renoly Santiago (The Phantom Phreak), Laurence Mason (Lord Nikon, who totally didn't get the name because Nikon was a sponsor for the movie), and Jesse Bradford (Joey, not “elite” enough for a hacker name). The team battles an evil hacker, who works for a major corporation, played wonderfully by Fisher Stevens (aka The Plague). Penn Jillette plays Hal, a hapless lower-level IT security guard thing. Sadly, Teller does not pop out of a hat somewhere, that being one of this movie’s few faults. Wendell Pierce, Marc Anthony, and Michael Gaston are US Secret Service agents, who are a nuisance to the Hackers. Also, Felicity Huffman makes a small role as an attorney. Maybe researching her later legal troubles?

The premise of this movie is… honestly hard to explain, kinda. I rewatched it with my brother recently, who had never seen it, and 40 minutes into the movie, he had no idea what the story of the movie was. The pacing is slow and weird, taking a while to get going. Basically, when Zero Cool was eleven years old, he hacked the New York Stock Exchange, got caught, and put on probation until he was 18. Well, now he’s 18, has a computer again, and is ready to hack! By the way, all the Hackers in this movie are supposed to be high school students… yeah, this is one of those movies, where all the main “high school students” are clearly in their 20s. Apparently, most of the extras were actual students? But not the leads. There is some playful back-and-forth hacking battling going on, between Acid Burn and Zero Cool, now going by Crash Override. There is a brilliant scene where they are hacking the output of a TV station at 4 am, going back and forth controlling the programs. They send taunting messages to each other like “You’re on my turf!” and “Mess with the best, DIE LIKE THE REST!” Crash Override and Acid Burn clash at school, not knowing that the other person is their Hacker Rival. She tricks him onto the roof and locks him outside, while it rains. He hacks the sprinkler system to make it go off at a certain time of day, so she'll get wet. He then hacks his way into being in her classes, because he wants to hack her vagina.

Fun fact: Jolie and Miller ended up getting married for real in 1996, divorcing in 2000, making their real-life sort of a sequel to the movie. It was the first marriage for them both.

Image by United Artists/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via IMDB

I gotta talk about the outfits too. Wow. These are the kinds of things that Hollywood executives thought kids wore back then. Do you want to know what 90s kids wore? Look at what people aged 35-45 wear today. That’s what we wore back then. My favorite bit about the entire movie is when Phantom Phreak, who is wearing two different and clashing leopard prints, taunts Bradford’s character with “Does your mom dress you?”

 

 Look at those clothes! So awesome!

Image by United Artists/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via IMDB

The crux of the plot revolves around The Plague planting a virus into his companies computer system, which will allow him to siphon off millions of dollars. It's explained kinda like the virus in Office Space. Bradford breaks into the computer’s computer system, to show how Elite he is, and gets a small fragment of the virus file. So Plague then frames him for the whole thing and then ups the ante. He programs 22 automated tankers to spill their oil into the oceans, devastating the environment, in exchange for a ransom. Why can't they just, ya know... contact the ships and warn them? Well because, in the future of 1995, there are no sailors on those ships. They are 100% automated, have not a single failsafe, and absolutely no way to shut them down. Ahh, The Future!

In the meantime, Acid Burn and Crash Override figure out who each other is and engage in hacker duels to win a contest. Crash Override wants a date with Acid Burn, but she won’t let him have it. And she has to wear a dress if he wins! She normally wears typical hacker/punk outfits. But in a twist, if she wins, he has to wear one also! Oooooo!

There are a bunch of wonderful scenes of them plugging their laptops into public phone booths in Chinatown or connecting directly to a phone line on top of a skyscraper. They look so cool, in sunglasses, typing furiously at their keyboards while random images constantly flash on the screen, and binary code scrolls by at 100 miles an hour. It’s wonderful. Their duel is entirely made up of them hacking their way into Pierce’s life, torturing the US Secret Service Agent. They cancel his credit cards, make a posting on a gay BDSM website in his name, declare him dead, etc.

But all their fun and games come to a stop after The Plague realizes that Bradford hid the virus code he stole somewhere, and so the evil hacker decides to go after the rest of the anti-hero Hackers. And it’s up to them to put a stop to The Plague and his nefarious deeds! He blackmails Crash Override, planting false charges against his mom in an FBI computer because that would never go unnoticed. Another one of my favorite scenes is when Crash, with the code on a 3.5” floppy disk, is standing outside in the fog. A car comes up, with The Plague on a skateboard, ghost riding the whip. They drive past Crash and Plague snags the floppy disk. I’m serious, you can’t make this stuff up.

 

And why this movie is so good

Image via Flickr

This movie is absolutely ridiculous, which is why I love it so much. In more than one scene, there will be a SWAT team waiting to arrest someone, but they wait for the right cinematic moment to do so… like waiting for someone to open up the curtains in the room, so they can storm in. Acid Burn has a wet dream of Crash, who is wearing a tight, latex dress in the dream. The Hackers rollerblade around, everything, dressed like rejects from a William Gibson novel. One of the Secret Service guys compares the hacking culture to Communism, for the sole reason that they both hack famous documents that are a “Manifesto.” Bradford’s high school character is constantly smoking cigarettes, sometimes more than one at the same time. Things like that just make me go “Wow, this is amazing.” It’s awful. And genius at the same time.

The movie ends with a huge showdown, as the Hackers get this “Hack the Planet” TV show to convince all the hackers in the world to hack the corporation at the same time, so they can get in and get the rest of the virus file and clear their names. The Final Battle is one of the greatest things ever made, it’s all on this giant 3D rendered display in the server room at the corporation and each virus that a hacker puts in his some kind of animated attack. Think of Dennis Nedry’s virus in the computers in Jurassic Park (“You didn’t say the magic word!”) but on acid. Cinematic brilliance.

 

A lying, cheating, swindling, con artist sits next to Penn Jillette and the doctor from The Sopranos

Image by United Artists/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via IMDB

I know what some of you will say. “Ah, I thought he hated it when movies get silly and cartoonish! Everything has to be 100% serious!” No. What I hate is inconsistency and lack of understanding presentation. If your movie is a serious look at viruses and a condemnation of how the US government lacks proper biodefense, but you have a stupid helicopter duel out of nowhere and end on a “Yay America! Yay democracy!” speech, that’s crap. If the object of a movie is to terrify me, but all of a sudden you have a silly scene that doesn’t fit the story or the flow, that’s bad. If your characters suddenly do something that is either unrealistic or goes against what you’ve already established for them, that’s lazy writing. Hackers never pretends to be anything other than a really silly movie, and it’s so over-the-top with it, that it’s wonderful.

 

Basically in love with his hair and sunglasses combo

Image by United Artists/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via IMDB

Hackers was released on September 15, 1995. It sadly flopped, bringing in only $7.5 million against a budget of $20 million. But it has gained a cult following over the years, getting a lease on life with home video and streaming services today. I first saw it in 1998, while I was in Tennessee, following my grandmother’s passing. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I’m not even sure if I knew what to make of it. It was silly and over-the-top, and I kinda liked it. Subsequent viewings over the years have only increased my love of this movie. I will say, this is a movie that is even better drunk. I am pretty sure I’ve only seen it sober twice. The first time I watched it and the most recent time. I purchased it on Google Play, because I got tired of wanting to watch it but being unable to because it wasn’t currently streaming for free anywhere.

Johnny Lee Miller was one of those hot, young actors that Hollywood tried to push to be the Next Big Thing. He’s done well for himself, he still acts, recently finishing up a six-year run on the show Elementry as Sherlock Holmes. But he isn’t Leonardo DiCaprio or Johnny Depp. Of course, this movie also has one of my favorite actors from the decade. The wonderfully underrated Matthew Lillard. Scream. SLC Punk. Scooby-Doo. Hackers. An amazing track record. Here's a contemporary clip with Lillard talking about the movie. Also found an interview with Ethan Browne, who played a small role as Jolie's boyfriend in a couple of scenes.

One of the big surprises from this movie is the existence of Angelina Jolie as one of the stars, you would be correct in wondering why she would be in a movie like this. Well, it’s easy. She wasn’t a huge star yet. This wasn’t her first movie (1982’s Lookin’ to Get Out) or her first starring role (1993’s Cyborg 2) but it was her first “big” role. There was a lot of hype and marketing behind this movie. It would be a few years before she broke through with Girl, Interrupted in 1999. But she started getting a lot more work after this.

 

Just a couple of more years, and she would never have to dress like a nurse in a Phillip K. Dick novel

Image by United Artists/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via IMDB

Rafael Moreu wrote the screenplay, inspired by the hacker and cyberpunk subcultures of the 80s. There were apparently real hackers who consulted for this movie and some aspects, such as using laptops at payphones, were based on real things. Some of the terminologies were also based on real hacker terminology. One of the consulters, Nicholas Jarecki, became so interested in the filmmaking process that he became a scriptwriter and director in his own right. He wrote and directed 2012’s Arbitrage and is working on releasing another movie called Dreamland later this year. I found a clip of Jareski, as well as "The Plague" Fisher Stevens talking about working with Penn Jillette.

Strangely enough, none of the cyberspace sequences used CGI. They were all done with animation, models, rotoscoping, etc. It still has a unique look and works well today. Speaking of CGI, the arcade game that Acid Burn and Crash Override play in that cool skatepunk club is an early version of Wipeout, which was developed by Psygnosis for the PlayStation and Windows in 1995, later porting to the Sega Saturn and much later as a downloadable title for the PlayStation 3.

There are no less than three soundtracks for this movie. Hackers: Their Only Crime was Curiosity, Hackers2, and Hackers3. The soundtrack CDs are full of mostly period appropriate urban techno tracks, featuring Underworld, The Prodigy, David Bowie, Moby, BT, Oribital, and the like.

  

Listening to the soundtrack is like getting smashed in the face by infinite 1's and 0's

Image via Pixabay

Final Thoughts

Was there any question as to what I was going to rate this movie as? This is one of my favorite films of all time, and it was a joy to watch it again. It’s both awful and brilliant at the same time. A stylistic, over-the-top, silly, ridiculous tour de force. A dumb movie that always manages to put a smile on my face and makes me wish I was as cool as these guys back in the 90s. I loved it and I can’t recommend it enough to anyone who likes dumb things.

Society at large was scared of hackers in the 90s, and with the rise of cybercrime and identity theft and cyber scamming, maybe they were right. I will say that most of the people in the hacking subculture in the 80s and 90s wouldn’t be directly responsible for the majority of cybercrime today. They were too busy getting stoned and stealing HBO to cause any real trouble. But it is funny to look back at these old computer and internet themed movies, to see what the impression of the public was on this culture shift, and seeing how they thought people dressed. Turns out you need two different leopard prints and rollerblade everywhere you go.

These are all just my opinions though. Log into my favorite “where is it streaming” website Just Watch to find out… well, where it’s streaming. You can also rent or buy it from various places as I did! Bought it on Google Play. When you watch it, or if you've seen it already, be sure to let me know in the comments section.

Okay, no more delays. Next time, get ready for the movie I promised you back in February. We’re going to watch one of the most enigmatic actors of the 90s, Pauly Shore, fail his way around 1996’s Bio-Dome. Will this be a forgotten classic? Or, spoiler, did it take me a whole afternoon to watch it because I could ’t handle it all in one go. Find out next time!