Hackers is a 1995 American crime thriller film directed by Iain Softley and starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Fisher Stevens, and Lorraine Bracco, with Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, Laurence Mason, and Renoly Santiago. 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."
The film received mixed reviews from critics, and underperformed at the box office upon release, but has gone on to achieve cult classic status.
Plot
In 1988, 11-year-old Dade "Zero Cool" Murphy is banned from owning or operating computers and telephones until his 18th birthday, after his family is fined for his crashing of 1,507 computer systems, causing a seven-point drop in the New York Stock Exchange.
On his 18th birthday, Dade has moved to New York City with his mother, and his ban is lifted. While he hacks into a local TV station, another hacker by the handle of "Acid Burn" counters Dade's attack and eventually kicks him out. At school, Dade joins a group of hackers: Ramon "The Phantom Phreak" Sanchez, Emmanuel "Cereal Killer" Goldstein, Paul "Lord Nikon" Cook, Joey Pardella (a novice hacker without an alias and the youngest member), and Kate "Acid Burn" Libby—the hacker who kicked him out of the TV station earlier.
Joey, out to prove his skills, breaks into a "Gibson" supercomputer owned by the Ellingson Mineral Corporation. While he is downloading a garbage file as proof of his feat, his mother disconnects his computer, leaving him with a fragmented file. His intrusion has been noticed and brought to the attention of computer security officer Eugene "The Plague" Belford, a former hacker. Plague realizes that the downloaded garbage file 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 U.S. 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 is searched, but he had hidden the disk containing the file. Dade and Kate make a bet: Dade chooses a date with Kate if he wins, and Kate has Dade be her slave if she does. The hacking duel targets Secret Service Agent Richard Gill, who was involved in Joey's arrest. After various hacks, including canceling Gill's credit cards, 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 that the disk is hidden in a bathroom at school. Dade refuses to help Kate and Cereal Killer as he has a record, but copies the disk so they have untampered evidence. Determining that Dade did not hack into Ellingson, Plague sends him a powerful laptop and asks Dade to join him. He later threatens to have Dade's mother incarcerated with a manufactured criminal record, forcing Dade to deliver a copy of the disk.
Kate, Lord Nikon, Cereal Killer, and Dade learn that the code is a worm designed to steal $25million from Ellingson transactions, and that the Da Vinci virus is set to capsize the oil tanker fleet the next day to provide cover and distract from the worm. Dade confesses that he gave Plague a copy of 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 has tossed the disk in a trash can. As Dade and Kate are being interrogated, Razor and Blade jam TV signals and broadcast live video of Cereal Killer revealing the plot and Plague's complicity. Plague is arrested by Gill on board a flight while attempting to flee to Japan. Their names cleared, Dade and Kate begin a relationship.
Cast
In addition, Darren Lee and Peter Y. Kim appear as Razor and Blade, respectively, while singer Marc Anthony plays Secret Service Agent Ray.
Production Screenplay The screenplay, written by Rafael Moreu, is highly inspired by the hacker and cyberpunk subcultures. He saw the film as more than just about computer hacking but something much larger: "In fact, to call hackers a counterculture makes it sound like they're a transitory thing; I think they're the next step in human evolution." He had been interested in hacking since the early 1980s. After the crackdown in the United States during 1989 and 1990, he decided to write a script about the subculture. For research, Moreu went to a meeting organized by the New York–based hacker magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. There, he met Phiber Optik, a.k.a. Mark Abene, a 22-year-old hacker who spent most of 1994 in prison on hacking charges. Moreu also hung out with other young hackers being harassed by the government and began to figure out how it would translate into a film. He remembered, "One guy was talking about how he'd done some really interesting stuff with a laptop and payphones and that cracked it for me, because it made it cinematic". Moreu named the film's Ellingson Mineral Corporation for his father-in-law, Chet Ellingson, who had bought Moreu his first computer. The character Eugene Belford uses Babbage as a pseudonym at the end of the film, a reference to Charles Babbage, an inventor of an early form of the computer. The fictional computer mainframe named the "Gibson" is an homage to cyberpunk author William Gibson and originator of the term "cyberspace", first in his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome" and later in his 1984 book Neuromancer.
The novelization of the film, written by David Bischoff and based on Moreu's screenplay, was released on July 11, 1995, two months before the film's release.
Pre-production The cast spent three weeks getting to know each other and learning how to type and rollerblade. They studied computers and met with actual computer hackers, including Tristan Louis, Kevin Mitnick, and Nicholas Jarecki. Jarecki served as a technical consultant and credits his experience on Hackers as inspiring his later career as the screenwriter and director. Actor Jonny Lee Miller even attended a hackers' convention.
Casting According to Fisher Stevens, Quentin Tarantino was considered for the role of The Plague.
Production 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.
The interior scenes for the Cyberdelia nightclub were filmed at the disused Brentford Public Baths, 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." 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.
Post-production 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." Video game developer Psygnosis created the CGI for the Wipeout arcade game sequence.
Shortly after the filming ended, Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie were married. They separated after a year and divorced in 1999, and remain good friends.
Marketing 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 was 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 film in its altered form.Hackers MGM DVD 8-page booklet featuring trivia, production notes and a revealing look at the making of the film. - Original MGM/UA website after defacement by the Internet Liberation Front
The film poster shows Acid Burn and Crash Override with various words and ASCII symbols superimposed on their faces, with the words: Lord Nikon, Acid Burn, and Crash Override God, Sex, Love, and Secret Phreak The text references the main characters in the film, the most commonly used passwords, and the type of user who specializes in telecommunication hacking.
Soundtrack 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.
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 three 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 film is "Voodoo People" by The Prodigy.
Most of the music in the film, including much of the techno and electronic music, was composed and performed by UK film composer Simon Boswell.
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Hackers2
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25th Anniversary Edition In 2020, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the film, the soundtrack was released for the first time on vinyl, in a two-disc set. A new soundtrack album by Varèse Sarabande was also released.
Disk 1 "Halcyon + On + On" – Orbital "Open Up" – Leftfield (featuring John Lydon) "Cowgirl" – Underworld "Voodoo People" – The Prodigy "Connected" – Stereo MCs "One Love" – The Prodigy "Original Bedroom Rockers" – Kruder & Dorfmeister "Good Grief" – Urban Dance Squad "Heaven Knows" – Squeeze
Disk 2 "Protection" – performed by Massive Attack "One Combination" – performed by Guy Pratt "Grand Central Station" – performed by Guy Pratt featuring David Gilmour "Hackers Suite" – Simon Boswell "Diskette" – Simon Boswell "City of Data" – Simon Boswell "Ellingson HQ" – Simon Boswell "Cereal's Speech" – Simon Boswell