Hackers (1995) - 6/10

People might tell you that Hackers couldn’t be more 90s, that it’s quintessential. Obviously the 90s looked nothing like Hackers in reality. Hacking was a thing of course, but it didn’t look this neon and sexy. Those people are right though, this oozes the pre millennial decade. I’ve not watched this since its release, but I recall loving it and its energy. It recently turned 30 (30!!!), so that’s good enough reason to give it another spin and see how it stands up. Dade (Jonny Lee Miller) is a computer whizz kid. Hacking systems as a child and being hauled in front of judges for crashing Wall Street. He doesn’t learn his lesson of course and grown up, continues to prank his way through a world still at the junction between analogue and digital. It always had its tongue lodged in its retro tinged cheek, but watching in 2025, Hackers feels sort of cute and a little bit cringe. Now going by the moniker ‘Crash Override’ while early Prodigy and Leftfield tunes bang out, we see that Dade has lost none of his skill. He’s like a tin-pot Neo. It’s a story of outsider geeks. People who don’t fit in socially, or academically. At a new school in New York, he runs into Kate (Angelina Jolie), Phreak (Renoly Santiago), Joey (Jesse Bradford) and the somewhat annoying Cereal (Matthew Lillard), they too also subscribe to all things cyberpunk. They’re pranksters, bored kids who enjoy playing in the back end of computer systems, but they’re also becoming public enemy number one, vilified by the authorities as terrorists, threatening the new digital frontier in which the world is stepping into. With plastic keyboards that clank, hooked up to dot matrix CRT screens with binary code, connected by dial up they into 3D animated worlds of supposed networks, zipping through the information superhighway. In such a world, Joey, the trainee of the group inadvertently stumbles into the territory of The Plague (Fisher Stevens), where he plants a virus and steals some valuable data… on a floppy disc. Although The Plague is frankly laughable, he’s more dangerous than he looks. He’s a hacker at heart, but ahead of our gang, he’s older and has monetised his exploits, working cyber security for a big nasty multinational, whilst lining his own pockets. He wants the data and isn’t afraid the play dirty and threaten everything Dade holds dear. The story is a little thin, the dialogue is shockingly bad. The acting is pretty atrocious, but it’s still fun and it still has some energy due to the soundtrack being the perfect snapshot of mid-90s UK electro punk. It plods a lot in the second act though, as Joey is grounded and the rest of the crew hang out, with Dade still failing to score with Kate, in a subplot love story that’s just an excuse for teenagers to lust over Jolie. Will Dade be able to beat The Plague, save his friends, save his mom, save the world from an ecological disaster and get the girl? I’m sure you can guess the answer. It’s not a great film, but it’s worthy of some cult status love.

6/10