Along with his new friends, a teenager who was arrested by the US Secret Service and banned from using a computer for writing a computer virus discovers a plot by a nefarious hacker, but they must use their computer skills to find the evidence while being pursued by the Secret Service and the evil computer genius behind the virus.
What's most grating about Hackers, however, is the guileless way the movie buys in to the computer-kid-as-elite-rebel mystique currently being peddled by magazines like Wired.
– Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly,
7 Sep 2011
fresh:
The story is negligible, but it offers the same order of fun as a good rock video: the marriage of images and music.
– Bruce Diones,
New Yorker,
3 May 2013
rotten:
This is a movie that sums up the worst of the computer era: zapping you with techno-cliches and trapping you in constant visual crash and burn.
– Michael Wilmington,
Chicago Tribune,
3 May 2013
rotten:
After the mechanics of the thriller plot start to kick in, the film drags. And when it's time for the big cyber-showdown, we're stuck, once again, with footage of frantic typing.
– Jay Boyar,
Orlando Sentinel,
3 May 2013
fresh:
Hackers isn't a very good movie, but it's a darn sight more fun than The Net.