Director: Iain Softley
Starring: Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Lorraine Bracco
Running Time: 107 minutes
Synopsis: As an 11 year-old, computer genius Dade unleashed a virus that disrupted financial networks worldwide. Now 18 and recently relocated to New York City, Dade (Jonny Lee Miller) meets the hacker community at his new school, including Kate (Angelina Jolie), Phreak, Cereal, Nikon, and Joey. While hacking a global conglomerate to prove his credentials, Joey inadvertently exposes the criminal activity of a computer security officer known as The Plague (Fisher Stevens), who has high-level contacts with the Secret Service. Dade, Kate, and their friends have to join forces to help Joey and expose the conspiracy.
What Works Well: This hybrid techno crime thriller romance includes doses of knowing humour, and is packaged within a distinctive cyberpunk-meets-skatepark milieu, the surreal outfits and set designs evoking surplus Blade Runner inventory. The Rafael Moreu script provides Dade with a decent-enough backstory.
What Does Not Work As Well: Hacking is reduced to cartoon-level pop-up screens and abstract video game imagery, while beyond the rad look of high-schoolers competing to out-cool each other, the plot is both incomprehensible and preposterous. The performances are just the one notch above high school year-end play material.
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