Algorithm: The Hacker Movie
thehackermovie.com
thehackermovie.com
SPOILERS BELOW
The acting is bad, yes, but the script is not much better. There are so many places where they seriously oversell something. The classic maxim, "show, don't tell," is very appropriate here. Often times they approach something so straightforward, so on-the-nose that it is hard to take it seriously.
For example, there is a scene that I assume was shot solely to explain how apathetic the interrogators are towards the prisoners because it has almost no further plot significance. They have the guard say, basically, "I don't care about you. If I come in tomorrow and you're not here I don't care. I'll just interrogate whomever is here. It's my job." And while I think that's a poor script, a really good actor could probably sell it to be intimidating, but that didn't happen. It was just boring. Really boring.
Another example is the pair of agents that interrogate hash. The younger one is super aggressive, to the point of being comical. The older is super laid-back, again to the point of being comical. I don't get the feeling that either was suppose to be comical, but they are so one-dimensional and obvious that it is.
The call out to the CSI-style "enhance" was another example. Sure, they had to include a realistic version of that, but the whole scene reads like that was the only point of that scene. Like on the storyboard they just had, "This is where we make the joke about zoom-enhance." Or like they had some checklist of things to make sure they referenced.
You are exactly right also about the proselytizing about superficial hacker culture. I don't get the impression that the main character is an elite hacker with strong convictions about the way the world should be who stumbles onto something. I get the impression he's just a script-kiddie with the soundbite morals of a teenage hacker wannabe. Anyone who has been around for more than 13 years has a more nuanced understanding of the world. Being idealistic doesn't mean you have to have a view of the world that is black and white to the point of absurdity. I guess that would not have been so bad if his views evolved over time, but like you said: no character development. To make it even worse, after spending so much of the beginning of the movie explaining how life-defining his beliefs are he just abandons these core tenants of his world-view at the end like they're nothing.
Also missing is a sense of proportion or even consistency of urgency. Sometimes other characters will freak out over something that happened. But then the next scene you have "yeah, that stuff happens when you hack the government. Shouldn't have done that." Or the government agent who implies, casually, that after a minor mistake she was tortured to the point of not sleeping for days. Like it's no big deal, just part of the job. We torture employees and terrorists alike!
The torture scenes themselves were exemplary of the boring nature of the movie. I loved the "worlds can explain how horrible something like 20 days or torture is" so now let's just show you the words "20 days later." They literally had that voice-over on top of those words. I'm sorry, saying "It was indescribable," doesn't do anything to sell me on the reality of it.
And that's not even addressing the huge plot holes, or trying to understand what the point of the movie actually was (because it definitely wasn't a compelling story). Don't waste your time with this one.
Reminds me a bit of the style of Primer.
Much less cringeworthy than Hackers. 6/10
Having made a feature length film, for what I imagine to be a similar budget or less, I might also be able to appreciate the effort that was put into this better than most here.
I think the general HN rules regarding criticism when people post a Show HN should be applicable here.
Edit: There is a short pitch and some teasers on YT (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI8rbvoMOnw)
Maybe this is A hacker movie?
Fun lines: "I am a god" (The protagonist) "She's a lightning god" (Talking about a girl who chips Xbox's)
Then at the end -- his client tells Timothy that he has been there for 3 weeks and they were closing that facility. Does that mean that Timothy was in charge of how long Will was held? Which friends picked him up at the end?? -- does that mean some of then really survived? And what info were the interrogators after? If it was how Will did it, why is he suddenly best friends with a guy who set him up and will reveal all? Is it implying that the CIA/black ops uses these techniques as a standard recruitment procedure?
I personally don't think that fear based people are very smart. And I think that a little moral fiber also enhances IQ. This character said he didn't care about rules of nations, and then says that he has to continue because it is wrong. Doesn't compute. He doesn't even seem to register that he was endangering his friends. Not that people like this don't exist. Maybe that was the point, that power is in the hands of narcissistic children with crippled moral fiber. If so, there's nothing new in the computer age about that one.
The production quality was good, the fact that it's an indie film is pretty cool. I think we're expecting too much from it, although given it's SF roots you'd think they'd target the extremely tech-savvy audience rather than the average movie-goer.
Could be an interesting weekend project. :P
The premise of the movie seems pretty interesting I love the profit-share model, and the motivation behind creating the film:
"At the core of ALGORITHM’s plot are the questions that are shaking up the tech world to it’s very core, and the nations of the world right along with them: privacy, human rights, the place of government in the lives of citizens, the value and power of technology."
Lots of indie movies are put together this way. It's industry code for 'work for free.' I own a percentage of several feature films, none of which are actually worth anything. That's not an altogether bad thing, it can be a good way to gain experience or burnish your credentials, eg I will sometimes work on a project for free because it creates a connection with a particular actor or gives me the ability to call in a favor in the future.
But you should know that it's kind of an indie/student film marketing trick. It's much easier to find talented folk than the money to pay them.
I can definetly understand finding people is easier than paying them. I guess I didn't really factor the economy and indie movie scene into my response.
Experience never hurts - so long as you learn from it (and it is benifical to you (eg. connections and favors; as you pointed out)
Sorry
Because of its privacy settings,
this video cannot be played here.
http://www.vincepergolizzi.com/2014/01/how-to-download-priva...
Heck, I understand we all want to see when we want because we have better things to do now or not enough time. Regardless, I don't think we should ruin from starters their commercial project.
I mean, it's not even a DRM. Just a weak misleading protection layer from Vimeo for deterring little noobs that don't know how to use their browser's debug console.
Let's give the creators some advantage before gaming the system.
Also, if someone genuinely can't afford the price, they can still enjoy the video. That seems like a net win for society.
But... I see no point into publishing the direct stream link. Although it's funny due what the movie is about, I think it creates some disadvantages for them.
I hope they took in mind this and they don't feel threatened by this behavior.
No matter how long, more "leechers" are going to abuse the system instead of a few "geeks" with the knowledge.
Sure, if the timespan is short, almost no damages will be taken. Unless it gets distributed through other networks. If they didn't expected this, they may be upset.
Hey, even maybe this was the main purpose, to go viral. Who knows. I just wanted to share how I felt to see the stream link published.
I did it through FlshGot. This is no science. It's just a rightclick.
This is not some hidden elite treasure you need to hide here.
I do: now I can watch the movie on my TV instead of my computer screen. With my current setup, having a naked mp4 file is the only way for me to easily do this.
I'm hoping that the movie gets better, but so far it's espousing the teenage-wannabe-god version of being a hacker.
surely information wants to be free? :-)
That's why small producers' crowdfundings tend to work, because we appreciate the effort.
Information wants to be free. True. It doesn't mean free-for-all.
A little note aside the link saying: "hey, wouldn't be great to donate to them if we like it" would be fairer than just simply pasting the link.
The fact that they were being serious and the that it has very little to do with HN made me flag this post. Nothing to see here.
2130706433 == 127.0.0.1
Also, a lot of the trailers focus on cracking, it appears, and not hacking as in doing creative things and using things in ways not expected? Why would someone aiming at the tech community use a word so wrongly, and in a way that riles some of us up?
While I understand that mono uses the .exe suffix, not many other things do in the *nix ecosystem, but the screen shot they use shows what appears to be ls -l output and all the files have a .exe suffix.
EDIT: Fair enough, I'm being a bit too critical of the exe files. (I don't think there is a strike-out markup supported?)
Because most of 'us' stopped complaining about that ten years ago. The meaning of words change.
Security work/pentesting is one of the few situations where you could legitimately find yourself working with a lot of EXE files in Linux, because your targets are typically Windows systems.
> While I understand that mono uses the .exe suffix, not many other things do in the -nix ecosystem, but the screen shot they use shows what appears to be ls -l output and all the files have a .exe suffix.
So? "ls -l" means you have something that provides -nix style command line utilities, which doesn't mean you are on -nix -- plenty of people have that on Windows. And, of course, there's no reason you can't have mono executables -- or Windows executables, for that matter -- all in a directory on a -nix machine, as well.