Blackhat (Director's Cut): Re-Visit/Review

On initial viewing, I found Michael Mann's Blackhat to be a fairly boring, nonsensical, and hollow film. But I was also a different type of cinephile at that time. So I went into this viewing of the newly televised FX directors cut not only expecting something different but I went in far more open-minded, and in all honesty, it worked out for the better. This cut of the film has more of a significant and more coherent flow and progression to the narrative and thanks to a few key scenes, the emotional connection amongst the characters is significantly stronger bringing the core theme of connection to a stronger front. And on a stylistic level, the movie was more thrilling and entertaining to watch this time. Mann is still a god when it comes to shooting action sequences on digital and here, it's practically seamless. In terms of problems, the same ones still stand for me. The dialogue is so thick in hacking and tech jargon that it forgets how to be genuinely engrossing which leads to quite a few sequences feeling rather flat. Thankfully, however, that doesn't get in the way of lively and urgent the film feels when it really gets moving and 3rd act is truly something to marvel at. Overall, I'm glad I tuned into seeing Mann's intended cut of Blackhat and while it might still be lower-tier Mann, it's still better than the vast majority of action films.