Yet Another Most Retarded Hacker Movie Ever

I watched Swordfish last night, together with another geek friend. I went into it with naively high expectations ... you know, solid cast, hot people, exciting taglines. John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Hallie Berry, that dude from Hotel Rwanda ... how could you go wrong? These people don't make crap movies, right? Yeah, well.

It started off well enough. Hot, well-dressed people (some with dramatically-foreign accents even). Adrenaline. Big explosions. A major-league 360-degree slo-mo pan. Then, they started in with the hacker storyline, whereupon it screamed headlong into the storied tradition of cringingly bad hacker movies.

I humbly offer to future movie producers these simple suggestions that, if followed, could help make a hacker movie somewhere near decent (please, please ... somebody take my advice):

1. Have the hacker actually type on the keyboard, rather than just throwing his hands at it for a while before saying "I'm in!".
2. Have an actual geek anywhere near the set to call bullshit when something's just not true or possible, like hacking into the DOD in 60 seconds while getting a blowjob. Yes, really.
3. Never ever use some fancy animated graphical interface representing "hacking into the system" ... it just. doesn't. happen that way. Ever. Sorry, it's a command line. Live with it.
4. Hackers do not live some glitzy, expensive lifestyle with perfect tans and hot babes running around half naked. They are pasty and live in their parents' basement.
5. In the 80's, Kraftwerk may have been the de facto hacker soundtrack of choice. Today? Not so much.
6. If somebody can supposedly "hack into" and disable an alien mothership with a Mac in 2 minutes flat (yes, I'm talking about "Independence Day" ... admittedly, not a hacker movie, but there's a hacker scene in there that really pisses me off, so ...), then I want a PC to print without having to locate and download drivers for a half a day. Just once. Once!!
   

Sadly, not only was Swordfish lame in terms of any kind of geek realism, it also had holes in the plotline you could drive a truck through. If anybody can recommend a non-horrible hacker movie, I'd love to hear about it.

In the meantime, Eddie Izzard has a good take on computers:



(Photo credit: www.allmoviephoto.com)