A group of teen hackers, including ‘Crash Override’ (Jonny Lee Miller), who had been arrested as a child for breaking into government computers, ‘Acid Burn’ (Angelina Jolie), a girl with a chip on her shoulder, and ‘Cereal Killer’ (Matthew Lillard), the class clown, must band together to stop a corporate computer criminal (Fisher Stevens) who is setting them up.
Quick Review: This is a movie where geeks are cool, everyone travels by skateboard, and data appears on computer screens as a series of video-game-like rotating pictures, even when downloading over phone lines. Nothing is better in life than playing with your computer and sticking it to “The Man.” But in the end, “The Man” is OK with that because teen computer nerds are really the saviors of society. This is what a large corporate filmmaking machine (i.e. “The Man”) figures gen-X slackers dream about. They may be right.
Once I get past the impossibility of the technology, the falsified hacker subculture, and the nonsensical characters, I’m left with a fairly entertaining movie. The pace is good; there is humor in abundance; there is tension and some good chases. And who doesn’t like seeing punk kids (even those who look like models) stick it to “The Man.” Even for a film set in the present (now past), this is true film Cyberpunk .