Takedown (2004)

I love this movie so much

Sorry, this movie sucks

Just perfect...

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

From thequickflickcritic.blogspot.com/ "Adapted from a true story" flashes upon the screen as we are ushered into "Track Down" and our introduction to super cyber security system hacker and convicted felon Kevin Mitnick (Skeet Ulrich in a fine and frenzied performance). And what a messed up megalomaniacal miscreant we will come to know. "Truly"."Track Down" takes us along on a swiftly paced cat and mouse game Mitnick launches versus the feds and fellow hackers during the 1990's. And by all evidence furnished by Director Joe Chappelle (TV's "The Wire", "CSI: Miami"), entirely and simply because he could.The extreme lengths that Mitnick goes to perch himself atop a kind of self-fashioned "hierarchy of hackers" absolutely astounds. It is practically unfathomable to imagine what this "gangstuh geek" may have accomplished had he been of clear mind and even HALF a heart.Mitnick is vividly depicted here as unconditionally brilliant. And while certainly proving to be explosively bright, this is a miserably sad fellow who is emotionally busted to bits. Mitnick reveals to us in pieces a wretched upbringing which has continued to torture him into an angry and malicious adulthood.Here is just one striking example of how SERIOUSLY screwy this dude is. Mitnick has a character played by the paralyzingly gorgeous Amanda Peet all to himself on a couch in her apartment following an evening date. And SHE is even making the FIRST MOVE. It is at this pivotal point in the proceedings that Mitnick actually asks this vision in voluptuousness, even as she is wholesale submitting her most ample charms to him, if she knows how to SCAN? It's enough to make a guy wanna reach into the scene and whack the weirdo over the head with an iPad! Looking at computer screens crawling with programming code and dry eraser boards scrawling with indecipherable mathematical equations is not inherently entertaining. However, human beings desperately wrestling with such daunting data and the havoc it can wreak CAN prove to be compelling. And so is the case with "Track Down".Still, in the end, the reality is that what we are left with is the sordid story of a brazen and bitter man who proved to be nothing more than a viciously vindictive terrorist thug.For more of my Movie Reviews categorized by Genre please visit: thequickflickcritic.blogspot.com/

The movie is fine, but what makes me flush it down the drain is that the people creating it portray it as a true story, when it is in fact BS! Kevin Mitnick never caused money loss or economical losses for the companies claimed. He sat locked down without contact to the world. 3 years without trial, probation or bail. FREE KEVIN. He did hack into companies to get code for the reason of doing it. This is a crime usually punished with a fine or a month in jail. Kevin sat inside until 2000, and got to use the internet not until 2003. This man is a hacker yes, not a cracker. The justice system is about who wins a case, the federal government or you. John Markoff at the NY Times made Kevin so famous with his ignorant articles that the government couldn't afford to loose this one. Kevin is a true product of the American ways, stupid morons that have no idea how to use a computer sit and try to educate the people who do, hackers, by using there money, influence and power to shut them down. Imagine the argument the government gave for Kevin being in solitary today, "if he so much as has access to a payphone, he can call a certain number and whistle a certain frequency to create a nuclear war". This is one of the reasons Kevin sat in jail for! What bullshit, big brother sees you and then some more. Free Kevin Mitnick.www.2600.comFREE KEVINWatch Freedom Downtime instead.

Joe Chapelle`s TAKEDOWN is avery important film. sadly it was shelved and molested prior to unfair and unlimited release. The importance of this film lies within its` simplicity. Chapelle made a conservative Hollywood film that is just a story about people doing this and that. And there`s nothing nmore about it. There are no power struggles within it, no demographic scanning, no product placement. Just a true story about the demise of America`s notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick. It`s as simple as that. And TAKEDOWN takes us confidently down that route. Chapelle`s film isn`t perfect but it feels like a well-done solid and compelling story that tries to serve the plot and characters first aned never looks for any other kind of gratification. Simply put, TAKEDOWN is just a movie with no other non cinematic ambitions. And that`s a whole lotta quality in age when movies are supposed to be more than a theatrical event, when tie-ins and power shifts swallowed the very essence of filmmaking. Well, TAKEDOWN hits back big time, reminding us how movies are supposed to feel.

i think i prefer the original "hackers" to this, at least it had some humor value. "takedown", when you take into perspective the articles/books john markoff has written about his dealings with kevin mitnick [and the subsequent bling-bling-cash-money], is just a lot of lipservice for him and shimomura.but if you ignore the flawed story, "takedown" is still mediocre. the editor should have laid off the speed, we could have done without the mutiple "rotating shimomura" shots. imo, rotating phonebooths are much more 1337, if that's the effect the producers were hoping for.logue and ulrich did a decent job however. wong came off too mellow for what i took to be a rather intense corporate hacker.if you want a decent hacker movie, go find "freedom downtime," or "wargames" which is infinitely more fun.