Michael Mann. He directed Heat, The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider and Collateral, four critically acclaimed films that have earned him a certain pedigree among directors. He also directed asshat Blackhat, which is terrible, terrible and stupid. And terrible.

Chris "Thor" Hemsworth stars as an imprisoned hacker who agrees to help both the U.S. and Chinese governments track down another hacker, who has managed to destroy a nuclear power plant but really wants to do something with (spoiler) tin mining. Naturally, Hemsworth spends more time hunting down the bad guy--without FBI support--the old fashioned way than doing what he was brought on to do.

Blackhat is all kinds of awful, but instead of spending a bunch of overly long paragraphs railing about it, here are eight questions I would ask Mann if I cornered him in a room:

1. Why do almost all of the Chinese nationals speak with American accents?
2. Why does every single actor in the movie look and sound like they are extremely bored?
3. Why is a convicted criminal whose sole job it is to use his coding skills to track down a hacker allowed to go off on his own to investigate the crime in seedy restaurants?
4. Why can an MIT hacker fight like he is Jason Bourne?
5. How do Hemsworth and Wei Teng fall in love after having only been on screen together for about five minutes? Five minutes is generous.
6. Why do none of the people in the parade react when they see a man get stabbed through the head with a screwdriver, or crazy white people running around with machine guns?
7. Why does the screenplay appear to have been written by a five year old?
8. Why does Viola Davis decide to stand in the middle of the road when seven men are firing automatic machine guns at her?

Blackhat is laughably bad (seriously, the audience at my screening laughed out loud at many parts). The screenplay is off-the-wall dreadful--I mean, like, worse screenplay ever territory--the plot often nonsensical and the dialogue dreadful. The actors can't help but be awful in response, and Mann appears to have lost all ability to construct a movie. Even the action scenes are poorly done, and action is one thing Mann does well. The film is slow and boring, and the overly intense and often awkward score doesn't help.

The climax, as absurd as it is, offers a few bolts of energy, but by then, it's too little, too late. Blackhat is easily going to wind up being one of the worst movies of 2015.

Review by Erik Samdahl.