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Memories... Good soundtrack, even if the film did make me cringe. When it came out I was knee deep in oodles of Perl on a shit-hot upgraded SPARCstation 10 machine (not camo painted I will add). Whacked the soundtrack in my external caddied CD drive and plugged my headphones in, then spent 2 hours of frigging #defines trying to get the fucking thing to compile a CD player that worked on SunOS 4 OpenView that I'd down…
The (few) scenes that took place at school were filmed in Stuyvesant High School ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School ) which I attended. It always felt very appropriate - Stuy is a specialized math and science school. At any rate, I can confirm that the "pool on the roof" myth is indeed alive and well. Upperclassmen used to try and sell "pool keys" to incoming students for $10 each. Absurd as that…
And in a few ways it was accurate: it predicted (perhaps inspired?) the rise of case-modding.
Sneakers[1] > Track Down/Takedown[2] > Hackers[3] > Sword Fish[4] [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/ [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/ [3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ [4] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244244/
Edit: typo
The modem, hacking the phone companies, motivated by curiosity and paying no mind to whether or not one is breaking any rules, military misuse of technology, programs being used to ends not intentioned by its creator, command line, hacking alone, physical infrastucture comtrolled by software.
I mean, it had it all!
Funny side story: I grew up in LA and one of the things we got to do as teenagers was see pre-screenings of movies. This was usually before they were finished and rated, as a way for them to tweak the final product.
Hackers was one of those movies. They didn't change much except that Angelina Jolie unzips her jacket all the way to show her breasts. They cut the scene most likely to get their PG-13 rating, but 20 years later that scene is horribly sexist and a sign of the times.
For an actually good hacker film, see 23 (1998), about the story of Karl Koch.
I also like "Hackers 2"/"Takedown" despite the various controversies (the book being a rip off of another book, the script being a rip off, both book and script being factually inaccurate etc).
Still now that Mitnicks own autobiography is out, while the movie might not be a kind treatment of him, or his friends. I still think it's quite a good hacker film, with some traces of accurancy (think "inspired by true events" rather than "based on").
Btw, the name "Hackers 2" was just an attempt at marketing - the two films have nothing to do with each other.
Sneakers was better.
Yeah, the hacking in that was just right for a heist film (not technically impossible, but probably would fail 9 times out of 10), and the cast: Robert Redford, Sydney Poitier, Ben Kingsley, River Phoenix, James Earl Jones, Dan Aykroyd... probably more, but that's 3 Oscar winners, and a fourth with a nomination in there alone...
Don't forget Ben Kingsley, another Oscar winner.
One of the early on episodes actually has a character musing aloud if some screen writer is making the next Hackers to incorrectly portray this generations technologist. As they watch Hackers on TV in a hotel. A bit tongue in check, because the show itself is doing exactly that.
It's actually quite good and surprisingly "accurate" on the technology bits and even some of the personalities.
"Hackers" wasn't accurate but it did bring about awareness for the need for computer security and strong passwords. I think Hollywood should reboot it for the modern times.