Hack the Planet

I just watched Hackers on WAM (which is now called “EWAM” and has apparently been bought by Encore. I don’t’ know when this happened, but I don’t like it. WAM was one of the most consistently cool networks on the dial, right up there with Trio, and I don’t want to see it ruined or, worse yet, go premium). It’s hard to believe that Hackers is only ten years old (released in 1995). For one thing the club kid attire that the heroes are all wearing seems very late eighties. For another I was sure I saw it in ’93 or ’94. Whatever, I love it. It is one of the hippest, slickest, coolest movies ever made—a true icon of the postmodern post-counter-culture. It should rank right up there with Neuromancer. It deep-sixes The Matrix no problem (not hard, really). Best of all, it is the first thing I ever saw Angelina Jolie in, and it is still the hottest thing this hottest of all actresses has done.

But it is also fascinating. Long before identity theft became a national paranoia, though long after hacking became a reality, this little film made heroes out of hackers in the same playful sort of way that Tom Wolfe romanticdized Ken Kesey and his hippie cohorts in The Electric Kool-Aide Acid Test. Like latter-day Merry Pranksters, five amazingly young and beautiful anarchists save the world form an evil, slightly older sell out from their own sub-culture. A classic tale. Plus, it’s a great New York watching movie (even if a lot of it was filmed in the modern Meca of ultra cool, London, England).

And Mathew Lillard is so much fun (a little too much like my creepy ex-roomate, but otherwise a blast to watch).

Hack the planet.