HOLLYWOOD — One of the most difficult storylines to tackle these days is the cyber crime thriller.

It’s relevant, people are interested; but how do you balance a complicated cyber-plot that both makes sense to audiences with varying technical knowhow, while also selling lines of Unix code as entertainment.

As it turns out, director Michael Mann has no idea either.

Here are three reasons anything you decide to do this weekend will serve you better than watching “Blackhat.”

The journey of self-discovery

This Chris Hemsworth-led adventure follows a convicted criminal (Hemsworth) who is freed by the U.S. government in order to help bring down a network of data-hacking villains. That sounds straightforward enough, doesn't it? A good action adventure to kill 90 minutes with this weekend?

Unfortunately, there's nothing straightforward about this movie.

“Blackhat” suffers from a major identity crisis. It doesn’t know if it’s a Jack Ryan political thriller, an “Ocean’s” heist sequel, a Jason Bourne action set, or a gory “Kill Bill” revenge pic. Had it settled on a personality, maybe the film wouldn’t have felt so disjointed and tiresome. But 110 minutes into “Blackhat” and you’ll still have no idea if you’re nearing a conclusion, or even what a reasonable conclusion would be.

What you will realize by the end however is that not one character has progressed personally. Global terrorism, individual loss and forbidden love aren’t enough to make these characters stop and question who they are or what they’re doing. Only the movie itself has time for that kind of inner-journey.

The villain

Back in 2006, people were upset that in “Superman Returns,” Lex Luther’s evil plot boiled down to owning real estate.

If you were one of those people, stay far, far away from “Blackhat.” I won’t spoil the great reveal for you, but know this scheme is wildly more complicated and pointless than your reasonable brain will tolerate.

Not only does the devious plan feel more convoluted than a game of Mouse Trap, but also, the criminal mastermind behind it all is completely random and pointless.

Don’t look for any personal investment or cause for our protagonists to rally behind. Had “Blackhat” had a sense of humor at all, it could’ve made for a great episode of “Seinfield.”

Hackers are not action heroes

I saved this for number three because it’s a bit shallow, but here we go. Just stop it, Hollywood. The reason Hemsworth looks the way he does is because he spends his time at a gym. The reason there are people with the skills necessary to hack into NASA is because they spend their time at a computer.

No question there are wildly attractive techie-rock stars in the world, but look at Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Linus Torvalds and tell us which one of them you’d put your money on against a room full of terrorists.

And even if you do play the athletic-coder card, don’t make your code-writing protagonist speak like Jean-Claude Van Damme from “Bloodsport.”

But if such a character absolutely has to exist in your narrative, know there isn’t a government in the world that’s going to send their most crucial intelligence resource into the front lines with your special-ops team. None.

Look, we the audiences of the world are forgiving. If the movie is fun and we can check our brains out for 90 minutes, you can tell us a basement full of government software developers are actually a secret team of ninja. We’ll call it clever. But when we have to endure a two-hour snooze-fest like “Blackhat,” the little things are really going to get to us.

Conclusion

Don’t be fooled by the action-paced trailers for this movie. “Blackhat” is a vapid, lifeless endurance contest. At its best, this project feels like a bloated first draft. At its worst, it's an aimless staring contest with the audience that occasionally uses graphic, violent, gross-out scenes to get you to blink, which you and I both know is totally cheating … and disgusting.

Travis Poppleton has been covering movie news, film reviews and live events for Deseret News and KSL.com since 2010 and co-hosts the FlixJunkies podcast. You can contact him at tspoppleton@gmail.com.

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