Hackers

(Dir. Iain Softley, 1995)

by Don Piano

Last night I bought a sandwich at four thirty in the morning. Although it was extremely unnecessary I had to have my meats. I thought that if I ate while walking home it wouldn’t be as bad as just sitting on the couch and eating it. I ended up just looking like a fat kid who couldn’t wait to get home to devour his treat as I manhandled that sandwich in the early morning light.

This scenario shows exactly how I was with the movie “Hackers” in seventh grade. I had just gotten a VCR and I watched the shit out of this movie, everyday, after school for an entire year.

Hackers follows Zero Cool, who was the youngest hacker to ever crack a Gibson and send a virus that put the stock market into a tailspin. Zero Cool is now 18 and free to use a computer again as he moves to NYC with his trophy mom after a nasty divorce. Despite being a total babe he is a complete outcast at school and he returns to his old hacking ways under the new moniker Crash Override. He immediately forms a rivalry in real life with the total babe Angelina Jolie while unbeknownst to him he starts a rivalry with her on the net as well. Eventually the Phone Phreak figures out that Crash Override has some talent and he is invited to the hackers' hangout where they rollerblade, play video games, eat fries and talk all things “hack.” This where it gets confusing so hang tight. Newbie Joey, who can’t decide on a name, accidentally downloads the Da Vinci Virus who The Plague put into his own company to scam them out of some serious cash. Now the Plague has to blame it on the hackers even though they are good hackers. Angelina Jolie and Crash Override set aside their war against secret service agent Richard Gill (played by Bunk from the Wire, fuck yeah!) to stop getting innocently blamed with this virus. Their cronies The Cereal Killer and Lord Nikon come along to help out along with Razor and Blade and other hackers all over the globe to overtake the Plague, stop the Da Vinci virus and clear their names and HACK THE PLANET! Which they all do within a few minutes. Then in the end Crash Override goes on a date with Angelina Jolie and he wears a dress.

This movie predicted wireless Internet when they were hacking on top of the Empire State building. This movie also invented the saying, “Yo, I’m blowing up” when your pager would go off. This movie introduced us to the Prodigy and Underworld and Orbital years before we were ready for that sort of thing. This movie had it all. How about the opening where the camera floats above a circuit board and then seamlessly changes into New York City from above??? Genius. This movie still hits as hard in all the right places as much as it did twelve years ago. Except for that scene where they are freaking out because Angelina Jolie has a 56k modem. That shit is hilarious now and also Marc Anthony plays and FBI agent. This movie is the Citizen Kane of our generation. Prove me wrong, I dare you.