Hackers 2 Soundtrack

[Gaetan Boren]

Hackersis a 1995 American crime thriller film directed by Iain Softley and starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, Laurence Mason, Renoly Santiago, Lorraine Bracco, and Fisher Stevens. The film follows a group of high school hackers and their involvement in an attempted theft. Made in the mid-1990s when the Internet was just starting to become popular among the general public, it reflects the ideals laid out in the Hacker Manifesto quoted in the film: "This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch... We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals... Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity."

On August 10, 1988, 11-year-old Dade "Zero Cool" Murphy's family is fined $45,000 for his crashing of 1,507 computer systems, causing a seven-point drop in the New York Stock Exchange. He is banned from owning or operating computers and touch-tone telephones until his 18th birthday.

Seven years later, on his 18th birthday, Dade hacks into a local television station and changes the broadcast to an episode of The Outer Limits. Another hacker (handle "Acid Burn") counters Dade's attack. Dade identifies himself as "Crash Override".

Joey, out to prove his skills, breaks into a "Gibson" supercomputer owned by the Ellingson Mineral Corporation. While downloading a garbage file as proof of his feat, his mother disconnects his computer, leaving him with a fragmented file. However, his intrusion has been noticed and brought to the attention of computer security officer Eugene "The Plague" Belford, a former hacker. Plague realizes the garbage file being downloaded is a worm he himself inserted to defraud Ellingson. Claiming the file is the code to the "Da Vinci" computer virus that will capsize the company's oil tanker fleet, and pretending the hackers are to blame, he enlists the US Secret Service to recover the file. In fact, Plague had inserted the "Da Vinci" virus as a red herring to cover for his worm.

Joey is arrested and his computer searched, but he had hidden the disk containing the file. Dade and Kate make a bet, with Dade choosing a date with Kate should he win, and Kate having Dade perform menial computing tasks if she prevails. The hacking duel is to harass Secret Service Agent Richard Gill who was involved in Joey's arrest. After various hacks including canceling Gill's credit cards, creating a personal ad in his name, fabricating a criminal record, and changing his payroll status to "deceased", the duel remains a tie.

Released on bail, Joey reveals the disk to Phreak who is arrested the next day and informs Kate the disk is hidden in a bathroom at school. Kate and Cereal Killer ask for Dade's help which he refuses as he has a record. He copies the disk so they have un-tampered evidence. Determining that Dade did not hack into Ellingson, Plague sends him a powerful laptop with a request that he join him. He later threatens to have Dade's mother incarcerated with a manufactured criminal record. At this, Dade agrees to deliver Kate's copy of the disk.

Kate, Lord Nikon, Cereal Killer, and Dade learn that the code is a worm designed to steal $25 million from Ellingson transactions, and that the Da Vinci virus is set to capsize the oil fleet the next day to provide cover and distract from the worm. Dade confesses that he gave Plague the disk and reveals his hacking history as "Zero Cool".

Dade and Kate seek out Razor and Blade, producers of Hack the Planet, a hacker-themed TV show. Lord Nikon and Cereal Killer learn that warrants for their arrest are to be executed at 9 a.m. the next day.

The next morning, Dade, Kate, Nikon and Cereal roller-blade from Washington Square Park, evading the Secret Service by hacking the traffic lights. Meeting up with Joey at Grand Central Terminal they use payphones and acoustic couplers to hack the Gibson. At first, their attempts are easily rebuffed by Plague, who calls Dade to taunt him. Razor and Blade have contacted hackers around the world, who lend their support and distract Plague long enough for Joey to download the file.

After crashing the Gibson, Dade and company are arrested. Dade cryptically informs Cereal Killer that he's tossed the disk in a trash can. As Dade and Kate are being interrogated, Razor and Blade jam television signals and broadcast live video of Cereal Killer revealing the plot and Plague's complicity. Plague is arrested while attempting to flee to Japan. Their names cleared, Dade and Kate begin a relationship.

The novelization of the movie written by David Bischoff, based upon Rafael Moreu's screenplay, came out on July 11, 1995, two months before the film's release.[8] Renewed interest in the movie in the 2020s has caused the second-hand market for the novels to increase.[9]

The school scenes were filmed in Stuyvesant High School and the surrounding areas in the TriBeCa, Battery Park City, and East Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in November 1994. In several exterior scenes, the viewer can see the World Financial Center. Many scenes included real school seniors as extras.[5][14]

The interior scenes for the Cyberdelia nightclub were filmed at the disused Brentford Public Baths,[15] on the outskirts of London. Producer Ralph Winter noted, "We never knew why, but the pool was designated a historic landmark, so great care had to be taken not to damage anything and to return it to its original state."[16] The exterior set was filmed in downtown Manhattan.

The scenes for Ellingson Mineral Corporation were filmed on a soundstage, but the establishing shots of the company's headquarters used One Liberty Plaza and took inspiration from that building to create the hardware behind "The Kernel". In the final shot of the building, Softley digitally added a swimming pool on the rooftop of the building. Additionally, establishing shots of the World Trade Center and Empire State Building were used to occasionally give the viewer a visual reminder of the city the film was set in.

Softley did not use CGI for any of the sequences in cyberspace. He said they used "more-conventional methods of motion control, animation, models, and rotoscoping to create a real, three-dimensional world, because... computer graphics alone can sometimes lend a more flat, sterile image."[6] Video game developer Psygnosis created the CGI for the Wipeout arcade game sequence.[17]

MGM/UA set up a website for Hackers that soon afterwards was allegedly hacked by a group called the "Internet Liberation Front". A photograph of the film's stars Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller were doodled upon, and the words "this is going to be an entertaining fun promotional site for a movie," were replaced with "this is going to be a lame, cheesy promotional site for a movie!" The studio maintained the site during the theatrical run of the movie in its altered form.[6][20][21]

Softley said that he wanted the film's music to be dreamlike and reflect the aspects of data and technology being shown on screen. He compiled tracks from various artists, while taking suggestions from assistant Gala Wright and music supervisor Bob Last.[23]

The music soundtrack combines electronica, pulsating tribal rhythms and techno/house music of early hardcore groups like Prodigy, Underworld and Orbital; it was released in 3 separate volumes over three years. The first volume was composed entirely of music featured in the film (with the exception of Carl Cox's "Phoebus Apollo"), while the second and third are a mix of music "inspired by the film" as well as music actually in the film. The most featured song in the movie is "Voodoo People" by The Prodigy.

The film was released September 15, 1995. It opened in 1,812 theaters and earned $3.2 million in its opening weekend, finishing in 4th place.[26] The film ended its run with a domestic box office gross of $7.5 million.[27]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 33% based on reviews from 46 critics. The website's consensus states "Hackers has a certain stylish appeal, but its slick visuals and appealing young cast can't compensate for a clichd and disappointingly uninspired story."[28] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 46 out of 100 based on reviews from 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[29] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F.[30]

Critics praised the film for its stylish visuals but criticized its unconvincing look at hackers and their subculture. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "The movie is smart and entertaining, then, as long as you don't take the computer stuff very seriously. I didn't. I took it approximately as seriously as the archeology in Indiana Jones".[31] On the show Siskel & Ebert, Ebert gave the film thumbs up while Gene Siskel gave the film thumbs down, saying, "I didn't find the characters that interesting and I really didn't like the villain in this piece. I thought Fisher Stevens was not very threatening... The writing is so arch."[32]

Hackers was released on VHS and LaserDisc in 1996 and to DVD by MGM Home Video on August 25, 1998, as a Region 1 widescreen DVD. The Region 2 DVD was released in 2001; it allowed selection between PAL and 16:9 Widescreen, with Dolby Digital.[40] On October 25, 2005, it was released in UMD format, playable on the Sony PSP.[41]

Shout! Factory released a 20th anniversary Blu-ray on August 18, 2015.[42] Blu-ray.com gave the film a 4/5 for both video and audio.[43] DVDTalk.com noted the Blu-ray only included a stereo audio mix, while the packaging listed a 5.1 mix as an option, and the previous DVD release included a 5.1 mix.[44] Shout! Factory released a Ultra HD Blu-ray Collector's Edition on August 22, 2023.[45]

Hackers follows a crew of high schoolers led by a very young Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller (under the codenames Crash Override and Acid Burn) fighting against The Plague, a hacker turned corporate tech security expert framing the kids for his own malicious schemes. At the dawn of the internet as we know it, that meant visualizing the inside of a computer as buildings fading into circuit boards. Furious typing is matched with twisted synths, and breaking through firewalls is scored by opening up the ambient heavens a la the Math Lady meme.

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