The story is simple, but I think this film has a lots of 90s spirit, the clothes and the soundtrack are amazing, just people who born or lived their teenage life in the 90s would love this film.... the acting isn't bad, and the cast it's really good, I think this film has potential.

Making a movie about computers is difficult. Even the latest equipment looks ridiculously antique within a few years of release. There is not really anything to see -- just people sitting at keyboards. You must interpret it poetically. There is not much action. The public has no idea what is really going on.The best attempts, like Tron, work at two levels, direct action for the kids, and subtle in-jokes and metaphors for the computer savvy.Hackers has lots of energy, but it is downright silly.For a start, the techno-babble is complete gibberish. The screenwriters did not even know the difference between a modem, a screen and RAM. I think they composed the dialogue by looking up computer jargon in a dictionary and throwing the words into a hat. They make zero attempt at plausibility.This incompetence quickly destroys the illusion we are viewing whiz kids capable of bringing down civilisation as we know if they so chose.Most of the dialogue is theme and variation on "I'm the king of the castle, and you're the dirty rascal". It sounds like something first graders would say. It is so juvenile, it is jarring.Another jarring thing. Dade and his mother stayed in a one-bedroom apartment where mom slept on the couch. Yet Dade had thousands of dollars to spend on clothes and hairstyling.There is a goony character called Cereal. He appears to be brain damaged, perhaps from too many drugs. Yet we are supposed to believe he took over all TV channels of earth.But the main problem with the movie was the lead Dade, played by Johnny Lee Miller. He was badly miscast. His hair was expensively bleached and each curl pressed into place. He wore a leather jacket costing thousands of dollars that Liberace might have coveted. His facial features were so sharp he could cut cheese with them, but he had no sizzle. He came across as soggy as yesterday's waffle, a sort of young Lawrence Welk. His voice was as flat as Houston astronaut ground control.Angelina Jolie did a great job with the atrocious dialogue they handed her. She was like a time bomb about to explode. It is too bad the movie was not written more around her acting skills.A touch I did like was the way the characters got around their city with dazzling speed on roller blades. It added some visual excitement and flash.Some of the CGI visuals to poetically represent hacking into computers were of course completely unrealistic, but at least interesting and metaphorically evocative.A movie is a team. The writers were incompetent though the basic plot was quite clever. Most of the actors were great. The visual effects people were ahead of their time (but of course dated now). A movie is as good as its weakest link.

I have read most the reviews on here which there is a lot of good and bad people are saying. I can see where the bad reviews are coming from but I just don't get how some people just can't simply watch a movie and just appreciate it for what it is? Entertainment. . . . . I watch this movie at a minimum a few times per year and never get sick of it.It's great to watch some of the actors in their earlier roles, it almost has an 80's look to it with some of the clothes they wear, I connected with it when it came out due to I was similar in age. Maybe that's why I still like it today because I saw it when I was much younger. It is very silly and not accurate at times but I didn't watch it for it's authenticity of hacker / computer terms, I watched it because it looked like a fun movie and I was right.Matthew Lillard's character had me rolling a few times and when they mess with the secret service agent in charge of catching them was great. Reminded me of being young and messing with someone in similar ways. The soundtrack is excellent, it made the movie for me. I bought it and listen to it more then I watch the movie.I give any movie I watch a 10 if it ends up being a movie that I can watch over and over and can put it into the "if you were stranded on a desert island what movies would you want with you" category! This is definitely one of those movies for me, but I am easily entertained when I watch a movie. It has to be a boring slow movie like He Said, She Said for me to hate it! "It's leopard boy . . . . and the Decepticons!"

Hackers is directed by Iain Softley and written by Rafael Moreu. It stars Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, Laurence Mason, Renoly Santiago, Fisher Stevens and Lorraine Bracco. Music is scored by Simon Boswell and Guy Pratt and cinematography by Andrzej Sekula. Young Dade Murphy (Miller) gets banned from touching a computer again until his 18th birthday because of a infamous hacking stunt. Moving to New York with his mum, Dade meets like-minded techno heads at his new school. When one of them hacks into a scam masterminded by The Plague (Stevens), the gang find themselves framed and have to not only clear their names, but also avert computer catastrophe.I desperately don't want to be one of this middle aged squares who frowns at teenagers, I consistently worry about the widening generational gap. Yet Hackers is irritating beyond compare, a film that, were I a teenage techno geek, would probably be on my "epic" favourites list. The 90s saw a rush of cyberspace/computer based thrillers, think The Net, Antitrust, The Lawnmower Man et al, none of which had the savvy nous or intelligence of War Games a decade earlier or Sneakers from 92. The main problem with Hackers is that it forgoes plot in favour of bombarding the viewer with techno babble and flashy visuals, it thinks it's being immeasurably cool by having this bunch of genius hacker kids (who conveniently all go to the same school) take on the establishment, but it's desperately shallow and comes off as an excuse to showcase some pretty young things in a world that the writers know nothing about.Computer based crime is very real, now more than ever, and it's frightening, but this never comes to the fore here, the peril is preposterous and pushed to the sidelines. In fact the only thing scary here is Matthew Lillard's pig-tail plats! Softley, who made the rather great Backbeat, is more content with MTV style coolness than making his film stand on its own thematic two feet. It's all very colourful, but even the gorgeous colour only serves to make this teen hacker world seem like a space age cartoon, the fashions more at home in an episode of The Jetsons. If it was Softley and the writer's intention to create an alien teen world, one that the adults are bemused by, then that would be impressive, but I really don't think it's that at all, especially since it rings so false. The young actors are enthusiastic, but that's about it, leaving Fisher's villain to hog the limelight, while Bracco is woeful.I can "dig" fanciful entertainment and spandex, but I'd also like a bit of substance with my eye orgasms too, Mr Softley. Thanks but no thanks, dude. 4/10