The Inexplicable once in a lifetime Double feature:
Today november movie month honors Hudson Hawk, a horrifically underrated and awesome movie. And Hackers, one of my genuinely favorite movies.
I remember I was home sick in middle school, or rather faking illness so I could take a personal day, and I was doing my usual thing: milling around with Legos waiting for my anime shows to come on. I was on the Cinemax at the time eagerly awaiting my first full viewing of Hackers (1995), a movie I, liike many people, cared very little about when it was released. But after a chance encounter with it on the cinemax channel the night previous I knew I had to see this thing all the way through. At the time I liked it for its visuals, its kickass soundtrack (and it still does kickass), and its great wardrobe and set designs. I loved the look and attitude of the characters.
Nowadays, while I adore the performances and the corny-ness of the dialogue, I have come to love it for different reasons. Throughout the movie our teenage super hackers go about their daily lives using their brains and "hacking the system", or otherwise fudging technology to their advantage. In one instance, the hackers razor & blade (best names ever!) show you how to hack a touchtone payphone with five dollars in quarters and handheld tape recorder.
And I only found myself identifying with this movie the more I got older. While however extraordinarily goofy and overacted this movie is, the subject matter they are skating on is an intensely relevant. That subject matter: "the system".
Sure this sounds naive, but its one of my neurotic phobias. These kids have to be smart in this day and age to get ahead, i.e. find loopholes and break the rules that were set for them. While its silly to show kids literally surfing the internet with CG boxes of code and their typing pilots them around, but the essential soul of this movie are gifted kids who are coming into their own and possess the intellect and the power to move and change things and have their own ideas on how things should be.
Their enemy, "the system"
the system that tells them that should be in school at this time, bills them for every little stupid thing, the system...
When I first started at MCC I had to take a prep math class. One day my lab instructor told us a story about a student who was working on getting money for a four year college. He had been applying for scholarships from various institutions and had asked my teacher for help and he agreed to help. One day the student had borrowed a lab coat and went into the chemistry lab and he asked a friend of his to take a picture. When my teacher saw this picture stapled to an essay he asked what it was for.
"Its for this chemistry scholarship, its only $500, but every little bit helps."
"Oh wow cool" my teacher said, "so you want to be a chemist"
"no, i want to go into english, but if I write an essay on chemistry and send them a picture they will send you the money."
My Teacher then told us how he told the college and the foundation on this student and they got kicked out of school.
"They were trying to defraud the system for their benefit"
If I were him and I caught that student I would have said nothing and silently applaud him/her for their ingenuity. The only real requirments were an essay on the subject and a picture and this student did that. He figured out a way to use the system to his advantage and that is amazing thing. He was applying it to his education, its not like he was just getting the money and keeping it.
This is just like the heroes in the movie, they figure out a way to get by and survive on their cunning. I have stepped out into the world and discovered all the bills that you have to pay, the hoops you have to jump through. Its not like my Dad leaving home with $500 and a pickup truck.
Anyway, Hackers is great for those reasons but not a great movie. It suffers from... well if you see it that part will be obvious. But look deeper, there is stuff being addressed about today's youth that is becoming more and more relevant with each passing year.
My first movie review:
Odd they list this review as April 2007 when I actually posted this in 2004. I doned the cubansandwich moniker when I moved to Bradenton in 07.
Anyway, so when I finished Hackers I was pumped. I just watched an awesome movie and I was ready to bounce off the walls and read about on America Online.
Then the credits ended and Cinemax introduced the next movie.
Hudson Hawk (1991)"Ruthlessly canned after its release by the studio, this movie was considered the first box office failure for Bruce Willis."
Thats an odd way to introduce a movie I thought and I stayed where I was.
What was to ensue I could not even fathom. I was hooked from the moment I saw leonardo da vinci walking around inventing, painting, and yelling at shit. Then Bruce Willis comes on the scene and the movie becomes the zaniest more wonderful what the fuck every put to celluloid.
I just recently found this on DVD and it has been in steady rotation since. The things they do in this movie bear closer examination and study. This movie is smarter than it lets on.
The performances are spot on too. Especially the scenery chewing duo of Sandra Bernhart and Richard E. Grant,
uttering such lines as "If Da Vinci were alive today, he would be sitting with us in the back of a limosine eating microwaved sushi!"
This movie is zany and fun, and thats refreshing. And to show you how much I back this movie, in the now immortal words of a good friend "Once you see this movie, you know me better..." there I said it. If a movie makes me laugh everytime I watch it, even after repeated viewings, its a keeper.
So you could imagine the afternoon I had. A crazy mash up of what would become two movies that I hold dear. Now if only MGM will get off of their ass and put out a proper DVD release of Hackers I could then relive that Double Bill again.
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