While the acting and dialogue was solid, this rather cliché and moralistic tale may leave some people with a sour taste in their mouth.

It may leave an even worse after-taste when the (totally private) "Federal Reserve" banking system, becomes its own bubble and then bursts, which is something that appears to have been building in the wake of the mortgage-bubble lead financial meltdown. If indeed these predictions are correct, and a worldwide economic collapse of far greater magnitude ensues, the US citizens will probably be told that it was all due to "Russia", "China", and "Hackers operating out of Russia and China...who may be on their respective government's payroll".

I listen to people who actually know what they're talking about and not talking heads with vested interests, so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to smell the faint aroma of economic propaganda (or a "contingency story" for mass consumption), which may become stronger in the years to come if these economic predictions are correct.

Just some food for thought.

However, I digress. On with the review!

Why should I give this film a better-than-average rating when the plot was weak and the main protagonist knew less about protecting their online anonymity than I do? Well, to answer that question I should say that "social engineering" is also considered a valid form of hacking. People are always the weakest point in any system, hence they are the easiest way to bypass security without having to force your way through from behind a computer.

Even with the most sophisticated of proxies and other counter-measures, there is no way to ensure something won't be traced back to you online, just as there is no assurances of remaining unrecognized IRL on a camera, even with a disguise; The latter just happens to be far more efficient, and can often be achieved by using real-life proxies to do your data-collection.

The more real life proxies that are distributing the original data in a non-pyramid/linear, distributed fashion, the less chance of one person being caught as the "ring leader", which is the exact same principle one uses when using an online proxy network. The fact they did funnel information from proxies in bottom up fashion was certainly a major security flaw that would have easily have had them nabbed for credit card fraud under normal circumstances.

If you're into the guts of how people hack from behind a keyboard, then this movie is not for you...but if you want to see a totally different type of hacking at work (predominantly social engineering), you may get something out of this film in spite of its pitfalls.

I saw this movie a few years ago. It was one of my favourites, before I became a software engineer. It's a great story and chain of events that leads to the center piece. A nice journey indeed, but this has nothing to do with hacking. I am giving it a 7 because of nostalgia. The real rating is more like a 5.9

It's a bit disappointing going to see a movie based on the strong title it's using and then feeling like you got your time wasted.

The whole movie is not about Hacking, it's about smuggling. And how did they achieve to get the smuggling business working I hear you say? Oh by Hollywood Hacking. Which means (very little spoiler but it's covered on the start of the movie) that literally our main protagonist wrote in Google "Darkweb", got registered in the team called "Darkweb" (So the page is not even in the Darkweb) and out of nothing he just "hacks". It doesn't explain the background job or anything our protagonist does except for the foreground part of the story. Which is that somehow they get packages from someone/somewhere (we don't actually know, the story leaves us blind) and they sell them to some contacts they happen to know.

It doesn't show anything from the "Hacking" part because obviously, it's too technical and more boring than it seems. The movie makes Hacking (the 0% of the movie because in literal terms, there is no hacking, just a little bit cracking) pretty much look like a Video Game in which the hacking part is concluded by the push of a button, some terminal lines (for pretty much unknown reason) and looking at a computer screen.

They created things out of nothing (Fake ID's and Credit Cards, how did they make them ?) and pretty much nothing gets explained in the movie. The only thing close to this was at the start of the movie where our protagonist searches "How To Code", which part was NEVER used in the movie. So that part was pretty useless as well.

The only little bit exciting part was the goodbye kiss of the movie. It made a -you could call it- a little bit good plot twist but after all this hay the movie gave us, I couldn't be much excited because it still leaves many parts unexplained and the movie still doesn't deserve even a little bit the title "Hacker".

Summary ....:

This movie is not about hacking, but smuggling. If you want real hacking and cracking, go watch the series "Mr.Robot". Although, even this does not have anything that could excite you very much on the Hacking part but at least it would worth the Title "Hacker". This movie does not. It's a poorly made "Clickbaitish" title.