Perfect cast and a good story

Great Film overall

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

as i am a crime writer, and know all about... movie is a great to watch, simply because you know what you are going to watch. There is so many titles with great plot, but actually nothing going on inside. The only movies which can be connect with this one as I know are:Thief (1981) -- zero points Swordfish (2001) - great movie Hackers (1995) - waste of the time The Conversation (1974) - fantastic Torrente - funny movie ...probably there some more. including TV episodes which are for kids mostly...I would like to see more of it based on electronic crimes... if you know some you can post me.About the movie. Production is fine. Actors could be better but is fine... About the plot, fine, but telephone phreaking will not work out at my knowledge. The schematic which is shown in the begging has nothing to do with it. They sucks his information from laptop* with some device like a ??? yea right.... laptop generate signal just which they want...He can not connect with somebody if he has computer turned of and having a sex with his girlfriend? I HATE THIS IN THE MOVIES! (using stand by on LAN?)The same with the ending of the movie -- o common? Is there any better ending than that? The way how they get the factory information... it is great thing'' - no doubt. Score 10.How to found a hacker: talking at chatting rooms... this is true!Having a free tel access... putting a bug /worm/ inside... I will let somebody else to judge about it. quotes: ''i know the guy who knows the guy'' they have trace him by original forwarded ip receive from the server - that is how they catch

From everything that I heard about the original script (which was "obtained" under mysterious circumstances and leaked to the world before shooting started), I was expecting this movie to be really, really awful. I was pleasantly surprised to see that either Miramax, the writers, and/or the producers took some of the hacker community's complaints seriously, and adjusted the script accordingly. The final script that was filmed is certainly more even-handed and fair to Kevin Mitnick than Shimomura and Markoff's horrible book "Takedown" was (for a much better treatment of the Kevin Mitnick story, read Jonathan Littman's 1996 book "The Fugitive Game"), and we should be grateful that this film didn't end up being the hatchet-job on Kevin that we all thought it was going to be.I was glad to see that the "trashcan cover scene", for example, didn't make the final cut, but a little disappointed that we weren't shown how large of a role that John Markoff played during Shimo's "manhunt" for Kevin, and then afterward; according to their own book, Markoff was present for many of the events that took place in North Carolina, and should have at least been shown in the scenes at the cell site alongside Shimo, Julia and the FBI agents.They also could have done more with the "Lance" character, who represented a real hacker calling himself "Agent Steal" that was working for the FBI, and who figured prominently in the arrest and conviction of another hacker named Kevin Poulsen. (Poulsen's story, done properly, would make for a great movie too, but I digress..) Another no-brainer, slam-dunk scene that should have been in the movie, but wasn't for some reason, was Kevin and Shimo's one and only face to face meeting, in a North Carolina courtroom shortly after his arrest, where Kevin uttered his now famous line "I respect your skills" to Shimo.I mean, it's no "Saving Private Ryan" or "Godfather Part II", but it isn't bad, either; in fact, it is a much more realistic and enjoyable movie than "Hackers" or "Sneakers" (to its credit, "Hackers" did have the lovely Angelina Jolie going for it), though not as much fun as "War Games", which is truly the "Citizen Kane" of hacker movies, or "Pump Up The Volume", which was more of a hacker movie than people realize, even though the "hacking" is done with a pirate radio station instead of a computer.As others have already recommended here, go find a copy of "Freedom Downtime", the excellent documentary about Kevin that was produced by Emmanuel Goldstein and the staff of 2600 Magazine, you won't be disappointed.

I was for some time in this business, so know how goofy some of the science is. And the acting is on the cheesy side as you would expect. And I understand that the many elements of the truth have been stretched quite a bit, both by the original participants and the filmmakers.But there are some things about this are very appealing. For one thing, there isn't the ordinary fantasy of cool computer graphics that movies like to pawn off on the unwitting; its pretty much scrolling text, as it is in the real world.What's really missing is the sense of community that all the gangs in this drama have in real life. Moving ahead for all the gangs is a game that encompasses life, something that is played down here as the mano a mano angle is enhanced.I did like a couple things: Amanda Peet has a non-formulaic role and does well with it. Some of the tensionbuilding devices were effective: the gloom, the dutching, the thunder. And it was good that to some extent they showed the real cracker game: it is not so much a game of genius or ingenuity, but of the con.Someday, someone will make a movie that really does exploit the mathematics of elite computer types. These guys tend not to be hackers: programmers are the secretaries of the trade. I'm talking about the few score artists who exist, mostly in obscure corners.Ted's Evaluation: 2 of 3 -- Has some interesting elements.

This is a decent hacker film, in that the scenes of hacking are somewhat realistic and not the CGI-aided, flashy-screen crap that Hollywood has been foisting upon us for years. Also commendable is the manner in which the screenwriters show Mitnick's abilities to "human engineer" his future victims, cold-calling them and convincing them to give him closely guarded secrets.The movie has several flaws, because it was meant to be entertainment rather than a true story. It is also cut way too fast, with a lot of jarring editing and unnecessary blaring techno music.There are many people who feel the movie is unfair to Kevin Mitnick. In the first place, it is fiction. In the second place, Mitnick is a criminal. I lived through the whole "Free Kevin" nonsense push, and was very quickly turned off by the way the pro-hacker movement wanted to whitewash away Mitnick's crimes and portray him as an innocent victim. The man broke into numerous secure systems and stole data, hijacked cell phone lines accruing hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen air time, infiltrated private data accounts, and electronically harassed those who were pursuing them. He broke the law, and his avoidance of prosecution for breaking the law only stiffened the fine he would pay.While I am certainly not for the unlawful incarceration of any criminal, nor the denial of their rights, we must be clear that hacking is not a right. Hacking is exactly the same as breaking into someone's house. The defense "I was just looking around" means nothing; the crime is breaking in, not what you do with what you find. That is the law. At one point in the movie the Mitnick character says "I could steal money from all these banks, but I don't!". Well, that certainly doesn't mean he won't if he needs to, or that he won't give the information to others with less scruples. It's rather like saying, "Sure I have all this nitroglycerine, but you don't see me blowing anybody up, do you?"Mitnick is not a hero, except to the rather sad hacker community who want to believe they can violate the law - because they have the ability - and not face the consequences. I am glad that he is no longer in prison, as I understand he faced some terrible events there that far outweigh what he did as a hacker. But he knew the risks when he undertook his criminal activity, and I cannot feel sorrow for him.