Firmly in his gritty Miami Vice / Collateral digital era, Michael Mann returned in 2015 with Blackhat, a meticulous cyber-thriller ahead of its time. As a mysterious hacker wreaks havoc remotely all over the world, the FBI and PLA enlist the aid of international hacker extraordinaire Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), offering to commute his prison sentence if he collaborates. Together with PLA operatives Chen Lien (Tang Wei) and Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) as well as FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) and Deputy US Marshal Jessup (Holt McCallany), Hathaway embarks on a globe-trotting mission to identify and capture the blackhat before they strike again.

Initially inspired by the real events surrounding the Stuxnet computer worm, director Michael Mann went to great efforts to ensure that the nitty gritty of hacking was portrayed as realistically as possible; “There were a number of people who thought this was all fantasy. Wrong. Everything is stone-cold accurate”. Are real hackers as handsome as Hemsworth? Who can say? Either way, this daring tactical thriller explores how the virtual disrupts the real in the era of mass surveillance, drawing our eyes to the invisible wars of the web. Overshadowed on release by American Sniper, this one is well deserving of a second look nearly a decade on as we venture deeper into the digital age.

This screening of the director’s cut of Blackhat will be presented by Jess Ellicott, film programmer at the Sydney Opera House and former head of programming at Golden Age.