Blackhat
At a nuclear plant in Chai Wan, Hong Kong, a hacker causes the coolant pumps to overheat and explode. Not long after in Chicago, the Mercantile Trade Exchange gets hacked, causing soy futures to rise. The Chinese government and the FBI determine that the hack was caused by a Remote Access Tool (RAT). A military officer in China's cyber warfare unit, Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang), is tasked to find the people responsible for the attacks, and enlists the aid of his sister Chen Lien (Tang Wei), a hacking engineer. He meets with FBI Agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) in Los Angeles and reveals the code in the RAT was written by himself and Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), his college roommate, in their school days, years before Hathaway was sent to prison for an unrelated hack. Dawai asks that the FBI arrange for Hathaway to be released from prison, where he is serving a sentence for computer crimes. Hathaway is offered temporary release in exchange for his services.
A dead colleague's computer yields a clue to a connection, so Hathaway and Lien go to the rendezvous but it is a trap set by the hacker to alert him to pursuit. Hathaway fights three men. They both head back to their hotel room. Things heat up and they kiss passionately and have sex.
In Hong Kong, the team works with Hong Kong inspector Alex Trang (Andy On) and traces the stock trade money to a known paramilitary operative named Elias Kassar. A stakeout team is murdered while Hathaway, Jessup, Chen, Trang along with a Special Duties Unit team raid Kassar's hideout but once again it is a trap. A shootout ensues and Trang as well as a number of SDU officers are killed. Kassar and his men escape.
The nuclear plant has stabilized enough to retrieve a data drive from the control room but it is corrupted. Agent Barrett turns a blind eye while Hathaway hacks into the NSA to use a fossiled data tool called Black Widow to reconstruct the corrupted data. He learns that the hacker's server is based in Jakarta. Lien finds out the hacker has been buying high-resolution satellite photos of a site near Seri Manjung, Malaysia.
Hathaway's hack into the NSA does not go unnoticed and the US government demands his return to prison. Dawai's superiors agree as they do not want to antagonize the US, while Barrett and her partner Agent Jessup receive orders to detain Hathaway. Dawai, Lien and Hathaway manage to elude their pursuers and make plans to leave Hong Kong and continue their investigation when they are attacked by Kassar and his men, who have been following them. Dawai is killed; shortly after, Barrett and Jessup, who have been tracking Hathaway using an ankle bracelet, arrive at the scene. While both Barrett and Jessup are killed in a firefight, they buy enough time for Lien and Hathaway to escape into the subway.
Hathaway and Lien travel to the location of the satellite photos in Malaysia to try and figure out the hacker's goal. Hathaway realizes that the hacker's attack at the nuclear plant was merely a test for a later plan to destroy several major tin mines in Malaysia, allowing the hacker to make a fortune trading tin futures, financed using the funds from the Mercantile Exchange hack. The two then travel to Jakarta and using a distraction manage to physically gain access to the hacker's server. They manage to transfer the hacker's money from his Hong Kong bank and force the hacker to contact them. The hacker (Yorick van Wageningen) and Hathaway agree to meet to negotiate the return of the money, supposedly in exchange for Hathaway's involvement in the larger scheme.
Hathaway insists the red hat and Kassar come alone but they bring their gang along. The meeting place is a crowded parade and Hathaway trails the hacker and Kassar from behind. Kassar pulls a gun on Hathaway but Hathaway is prepared and manages to stab him with a hidden screwdriver. Two of the hacker's men catch up and wound Hathaway, who manages to kill them. Hathaway finally faces off with the hacker and manages to kill him despite getting stabbed. He escapes the chaos of the parade with Lien's help, and then gets broke up. The film ends with Lien and Hathaway leaving Indonesia, with the hacker's money still in their bank account.
suspenseful, neo noir, murder