A couple of weeks ago, I went and saw Michael Mann’s first movie in nearly nine years, Ferrari. Prior to that film, the last one Mann had directed was Blackhat, an unsuccessful cyber thriller released in January 2015. When I say “unsuccessful”, I really mean it – Blackhat banked roughly $20 million on a $70 million budget. As a result, Legendary Pictures, the movie’s primary production company, had to take a $90 million write-down. So, yeah, it’s no surprise it took Mann nearly a decade to get another project off the ground. Now that he has, however, there’s been renewed interest in Blackhat. In fact, back in August, Variety ran an article in which they asked Mann about the film, and he owned up that its script “was not ready to shoot”. The article also mentions the movie’s director’s cut, one that’s actually a minute shorter than its theatrical counterpart. It’s this director’s cut that caught my attention recently, so much so that I purchased the new special edition of Blackhat from Arrow Video, which actually includes three cuts of the film (DC, theatrical, and international). After watching the director’s cut and skimming through the theatrical for the sake of comparison, I’m fairly surprised by what I found and how I feel about it. Mann might be accepting blame for Blackhat’s failures these days, but his director’s cut is something to be proud of.*

Before I jump into the alterations Mann made, I want to mention a few things that stayed the same regardless of the cut, at least as far as I’m concerned. For instance, the primary plot – involving an enigmatic hacker villain who’s manipulating markets – remains quite intriguing. Back in 2015, the idea that a person might deliberately melt down a nuclear reactor as part of a greater scheme to game the system seemed a bit over-the-top. Nowadays, with the prevalence of cybercrime and the advent of artificial intelligence, this plot seems very possible, or even probable. Personally, I thought that Mann’s direction and Morgan Davis Foehl’s screenplay lent Blackhat credence back when it first released, and it’s only improved with age. On the whole, the film presents an engaging world to explore, both from a digital standpoint and a literal one.

In regard to the literal world, Blackhat takes us on a journey from the streets of LA to the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong, from the mines of Malaysia to the festivals of Indonesia. The aesthetic of this movie is another element that remains outstanding, no matter the cut. Mann and his cinematographer, Stuart Dryburgh, frame each location in a manner that imbues them with grandeur and grit. Hong Kong is portrayed as so immense, loud, and populated, it’s almost overwhelming. But Mann also captures how colorful and stunning the city is, which later helps to emphasize how stark and depressing the barren tin mines in Malaysia are. No matter what you think of the substance of Blackhat, its style is undeniably assured and impressive.

With those strong suits out of the way, let’s talk about what Mann changed for his director’s cut. In the theatrical version, the movie starts off with a one-two punch of the soy futures hack and the power plant cyberattack. I understand why the studio may have felt this was the route to take; going hard on drama right out of the gates is sure to play to the crowd. But, as I now can see clearly, this ended up being detrimental to Blackhat’s act structure. In order to remedy this, Mann restored the power plant scene to its original position in the script – in the middle of the second act, about an hour into the film. This is the single biggest alteration made in the director’s cut, and it’s one that notably affects the film’s flow.

Like many critics and viewers back in 2015, I was of the opinion that Blackhat dragged as it went on, even as bullets started flying and bodies started dropping. In 2024, having seen the director’s cut, I now wonder why anyone ever thought reshuffling its cyberattack scenes was a good idea. By putting the nuclear reactor explosion in the middle of the second act, Mann provides the movie with consistent, growing tension. It also breaks up the monotony of watching the protagonists, Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) and Lien (Tang Wei), stare at code (and at each other), which noticeably aids the overall pacing. Not only that, this change makes the villains seem more capable and threatening. In the director’s cut, rather than jumping the gun and showing their hand via back-to-back hacks, the bad guys take their time, boosting the mystique surrounding them. It converts every aspect of their scheme into a puzzle to be solved by the heroes, piece by piece.

Subsequently, I actually cared about the soy futures hack this time around because it was allowed to stand on its own as only the first stage of a developing master-plan. In the theatrical cut, conversely, it felt more like a plot device that simply granted the baddies a sizeable bankroll. As for the reactor explosion, throwing it in at the one-hour mark truly adds to its impact, since it demonstrates that everything Hathaway has done up to that point hasn’t deterred the villains in the slightest. The moment becomes another intimidating, tragic piece in the puzzle that is the plot, in contrast to how it was used in the theatrical cut – as something loud to keep the audience’s eyes glued to the screen.

In essence, all of Mann’s revisions serve to suffuse each and every frame of Blackhat with as much meaning as possible, despite the limitations of the script. That’s not to say, however, that he introduces more exposition in order to explain certain on-screen happenings. Actually, I’m quite certain that his director’s cut removes a lot of dialogue to allow for quieter, more character-driven moments. For example, in the helicopter scene where Chen (Leehom Wang) confronts Hathaway over his romance with Lien (Chen’s sister), I noticed that a certain line I always hated was edited out. In the theatrical cut, Chen says, “I’ve never seen her happier”. That line that never worked at all, mostly because Lien behaves consistently stoic throughout, giving almost nothing away. By removing it in the director’s cut, Mann allows the viewer to decide for themself how Lien feels about Hathaway and their burgeoning romance, rather than bonking them on the head with “what a happy couple“. Overall, the occasional shift from spoken word to unspoken emotion/expression serves the film well.

That being said, the characters of Blackhat are the leanest that I’ve ever seen in a Mann movie, which means that those unspoken moments are often difficult to interpret. The only exception to this rule is Hathaway, at least in Mann’s cut. By stripping out most of the prison scenes, he makes Hathaway seem more like a hacker who’s a beefcake than a beefcake who’s a hacker, which is how he comes off in the theatrical cut. I think this minor adjustment benefits his character, making him seem more human and less action-movie-hero, and it also plays better to Hemsworth’s strengths as an actor. Sadly, the people around him are no more defined in the director’s cut than they are in the theatrical one. Everyone, and this still includes Hathaway, is essentially an archetype. Lien remains the stern female deuteragonist; never a damsel-in-distress, but also never outshining the lead, with whom she falls in love. And this love never means anything to the audience, partially because it comes about entirely too soon, squandering any potential it had to be affecting. The same goes for the supposedly deep friendship shared by Hathaway and Chen, who are old college roommates. Again, we see them hug, and we’re told how close they are, but neither cut of the film offers anything more than that. Consequently, we viewers remain unconnected and unconvinced.

The same blandness applies to FBI Agent Barrett (Viola Davis) and US Marshal Jessup (Holt McCallany). Barrett is the ultra-competent law enforcement character who’s dodgy in a gunfight. Jessup is the somewhat incompetent law enforcement character who’s lethal in a gunfight. Other than that, there’s a bit about Barrett’s husband dying on 9/11, a moment that’d mean nothing if Davis wasn’t such a terrific actress. Even so, that tidbit of background only makes Barrett slightly more relatable. Not even the villains, the men responsible for such immense feats of cybercrime, are offered any sort of depth. Richie Coster does his darndest to make Kassar, the main henchman, a despicable mercenary who’s surprisingly loyal to his goons. It’s an admirable performance, but one of a man who has no motivations beyond money. Somehow, the same goes for Sadak (Yorick van Wageningen), the mastermind and main bad guy. I say “somehow” because one would be fair to expect that his character’s motives might extend beyond the acquisition of unimaginable wealth. To be fair, the pursuit of money is one of the top reasons people break bad. Also, it’s possible – and knowing Michael Mann, highly likely – that Sadak had some sort of unstated motivation that van Wageningen used to inform his performance. Whatever the case, Sadak is a frustratingly underwritten foe in every version of Blackhat.

Somehow, some way, I’m sure I’m missing the point here. After all, Mann is a storyteller who often disguises meaningful substance with abundant style and intricate language (normally slang). Perhaps Mann wanted the relationships between the characters to be as hard to decipher for the viewer as computer code would be. Perhaps he wanted us to consider how spoken words can be destructive, but put a hacker in front of computer, and in a few keystrokes, their coded language can obliterate entire nations. If you really think about it, whether it be a misleading headline or some cyber-terrorist’s code, written language is what seems to threaten humanity the most in our digital age. If Mann wanted to draw attention to that, even at the expense of his characters, then he did a damn fine job. And when you look it that way, you come to understand the astute prescience this film displayed nearly a decade ago.

Indeed, Blackhat continues to find ways to surprise me; this time via its director’s cut. It surprised me how much shifting one crucial moment from the beginning to the middle could fundamentally improve the story’s impact and pacing. It surprised me how its threadbare characters, no matter the cut, made the overall experience feel similarly austere, preventing the full investment I so desperately want to give. And it surprised me how, through the lens of the last few years, its ideas and themes became more apparent and incisive, thusly validating the film in many ways. So, is the director’s cut definitively better? For the most part, absolutely. Blackhat will never be a taut, white-knuckle experience, but with Mann’s cut, it’s at least a thoughtfully crafted one.** And of course, Mann still pulls out the stops during the movie’s handful of gunfight scenes, framing them with unparalleled skill. For action buffs like me, that’ll be enough to keep coming back. I just hope the next time I do, some real-life hacker hasn’t lit the world on fire.

Notes:

* And based on his comments in that Variety article, it seems he is proud (to some extent).

** My main complaint about Mann’s director’s cut is that some of the reworked scenes are overly sloppy. For instance, when Hathaway is on the phone setting up the climactic meet with Sadak, the light coming through the window behind him fluctuates from daytime to nighttime and back to daytime. Also, after telling Sadak and Kassar that they’ll meet in 45 minutes, Hathaway is then shown sharpening his screwdrivers while Lien goes on a shopping trip to a pharmacy. Yet, somehow, they both manage to get to the meeting spot on time. For a Mann film, this whole sequence is shockingly imprecise.