This was a classic in its day and is still a pretty good movie today. The core plot is simple but the script contains many cool features that are still fun to watch three decades later.
This movie follows the fictional story of a young hacker called Dade Murphy – alias Zero Cool aka Crash Override – played by Jonny Lee Miller. He moves with his mother to New York, and meets other hackers there including Kate Libby – alias Acid Burn – played by Angelina Jolie. They have fun, compete with each other, and uncover a malicious plot by the head of security for a large corporation – initially the hackers are blamed, but eventually they vindicate themselves and are recognised as heroes.
There are no physical martial arts in this movie, but there are plenty of tactical concepts demonstrated. There’s plenty of computer hacking going on, plus social engineering, building infiltration, police evasion, etc. Of course it’s not totally legit, it’s just a dramatised depiction for the big screen, but some of the ideas & tactics portrayed here hold true.
Shortly after 50 mins in, is when it turns from a barely OK movie into a pretty good movie, as Dade gets closer to Kate and they agree to a friendly competition.
Fun Fact 1: When this movie was released, MGM made a website to help promote it, and that website allegedly got hacked and defaced. MGM decided to leave the defaced version up throughout the time this movie was shown in cinemas. During the hack, some words were changed in an attempt to light-heartedly mock the movie – nothing terribly offensive or shocking was said or shown. So was it really hacked or was this just a promotional stunt? The media says it was a legit hack, but I suspect it wasn’t.
Fun Fact 2: Jonny Lee Miller (who plays Dade Murphy) and Angelina Jolie (who plays Kate Libby) got married the year after this movie was released. This confirms their on-screen chemistry was real, although their marriage only lasted 18 months. Angelina went on to marry Billy Bob Thornton in the year 2000 – that’s 1 year after the movie they worked on together (called Pushing Tin) was released. Their marriage lasted 3 years. Incidentally, Thornton has married a total of 6 different women in his lifetime! Then Angelina went on to marry Brad Pitt from 2014 till 2019, but was dating him since they co-starred in Mr & Mrs Smith in 2005, which was when he divorced Jennifer Aniston. So Angelina has a strong track record of dating if not marrying her co-stars, and Jonny Lee Miller was her first marriage. She was aged 20 and he was turning 23 when Hackers premiered on 15 September 1995 in America.
