Old School (2003)

I rewatched Old School last night and was left so baffled and frustrated by it that I actually felt like doing a completely pointless recap writeup of a movie so forgettable that no one could possibly give a shit about. Because that's what I do.

Old School doesn't seem to be able to decide if it's a movie about a man overcoming a mid-life crisis, a college boozefest, a shameless titty flick, or a coming of age story, or a heartfelt rom com. There's seeds of all of these and none of them take root.

The outset of the movie takes placei n the greyest room ever, a "Real Estate Lawyers" seminar of some kind. The room is grey. Eveyone is in grey suits. Because in Hollywood lawyers are the most boring people on the planet (apart from maybe accountants). As someone who works with lawyers, here's a secret: those motherfuckers go off. They work hard, make a lot of money, and when they see an opportunity to party they do it right.

But we need to establish our protagonist Mitch (Luke Wilson) as someone with a shitty life and the best way to do that is to hamfistedly identify him as someone stuck in a rut. What sounds more boring on paper than real estate law? Mitch, because he's the hero, is fed up and leaves his colleague with a tape recorder to record the seminar so he can leave early and catch and early flight.

He successfully boards a plane after a relatively painless sequence where he needs to pass through a metal detector multiple times because he keeps setting it off, eventually raising so much suspicion that an assault-rifle toting guard calls for backup. Admittedly this movie would have begun production when post-9/11 hysteria was peaking, but this still feels over the top even when you factor in that it was a product of its time. I'm surprised there was no scene in a back room where a security officer pointedly drizzles a massive amount of lube onto a gloved finger. Frankly at this point you kind of expect it.

Mitch boards his flight and does finally get home ahead of schedule. Hearing moaning and grunting from his bedroom he obviously fears the worst, that his girlfriend (Heidi, who we only see in this one scene) is cheating on him. He bursts in, and surprise! She's just having some me time accompanied by some hardcore porn. Mitch soldiers on and figures since Heidi's good to go he can get in on the action, because presumably there's been something missing from their love life and this is a chance to reinvigorate it. Heidi stammers haltingly trying to get Mitch to stop undressing, the reason for which is the two naked (and for some reason blindfolded) people emerging from the en suite bathroom, startling Mitch. Double surprise! Heidi's been cheating in Mitch by having threesomes behind his back. her excuse for this is that she tried to tell him she wanted this and he didn't pick up on it, dismissing it as "dirty talk". Which is like me telling my wife I'm horny then getting head in a gas station bathroom whenever she's not in the mood. Upset, Mitch goes to leave, only to be confronted by a stranger at the front door who informed Mitch he's "here for the gang bang", because triple surprise! It's not limited to threesomes! let's rub some more salt in the wound!

Meanwhile there is a scene where Mitch's buddy Frank (Will Ferrell) gets married, which is integral to the plot and had to have time devoted to it. Really.

So Mitch moves out and gets a new house near a college campus, for reasons. His friends Beanie (vince Vaughn) and Frank help him throw a massive party which the college kids all come to because why wouldn't they want to hang with a bunch of guys in their late 30s? That's not even remotely implausible.

Frank's new wife warns him not to relapse into "Frank the Tank", which of course makes her an oppressive shrew and therefore the bad guy, probably. Frank of course gets wasted and relapses into "Frank the Tank", by which I mean he drinks and has a good time in a completely harmless way. Mitch wakes up next to Darcie (Elisha Cuthbert) who he presumably had sex with. She bids him farewell and leaves after a little morning-after awkwardness, introducing Mitch to the concept of casual sex.

Mitch isn't at his lowest point yet, he still has his job. Well let's have a scene where his boss chews him out for some screw up, which they deliberately make sound as dull as possible. During this scene the boss' daughter walks in for some reason. Quadruple surprise! It's Darcie! Mitch banged his boss' daughter, what a chump! QUINTUPLE SURPRISE, she's not even a college student. She's 7 months away from graduating... HIGH SCHOOL. THIS IS HILARIOUS, PROBABLY.

At this point for no particular reason the (MEAN OL') Dean of the college informs Mitch that the house he literally just rented is now only suitable for college use and he has to vacate. Mitch puts up half-hearted protests, apparently bamboozled by this turn of events despite being a real estate lawyer. No wonder he's getting shit on at work, he's apparently terrible at his job.

Beanie proposes they start a fraternity, so Mitch can continue to live in the house. Mitch protests that this will not happen. Then in the next scene they're in a black van with stockings on their head so they can kidnap their new frat pledges. See? Mitch was saying they wouldn't do something then they're immediately doing that thing! This is what comedy looked like in 2003.

They cause destruction of property and endanger lives, for which there are no consequences whatsoever because there are no police in this movie. Then there's a scene where they take far too long to explain to their pledges they are going to have a trust exercises where they tie cinder blocks to their dongs and throw them off the building, "trusting" that there is enough slack in the cord. Of course this coes hilariously wrong when the fat black guy's cinder block goes through a manhole cover and he plummets three stories to the yard, as a visual gag with no lasting ill effects.

They immediately cut from this to a scene where the pledges are being forced to run across campus military-drill style while Mitch, Beanie and Frank yell at them from a golf cart. The (MEAN OL') Dean has security called on them then goes into some exposition with his assistant about how they exploited a loophole in the studeny by-laws (or something) that gave them temporary protection as a frat while their application is considered, therefore the house can't be forcibly vacated. It's not clear why the Dean has such a boner for ruining Mitch's shit, but he's the Mean Ol' Dean and therefore the bad guy.

This leads to a scene where the Dean meets with the president of the student council and basically tries to bribe her into revoking their status as a frat so he can close it down.

Meanwhile, Mitch, Beanie and Frank are living the high life as frat leaders. For some reason despite doing absolutely nothing, all the students refer to him as "the Godfather", like he has some awesome power because his semi-frat is apparently the coolest place to be on campus, which is a completely informed attribute. We are introduced to "Nicole" a woman with a kid who Mitch presumably had a crush on at some point but missed his chance with. Now that he's single he clearly has a rekindled boner for her (and being a more mature lady with a kid represents stability that Mitch symbolically yearns for or something). Of course she has a boyfriend, which is another antagonist to bring Mitch down alongside the mean ol' Dean.

Now that we've established about three separate plots and none of them really lead anywhere, I'll summarise the rest of the movie in brief:

* Frank decides to visit his now-estranged wife (who has kicked him out for being too wild) and for some reason she's having a ladies' night where she and her friends are taking blowjob lessons (using phallic vegetables) from Andy Dick in a shitty wig. Frank sees this through a window at an angle that makes it look like she's blowing Andy, so he busts in to beat him up, only to get the crap kicked out of him
* we get the obligatory titty scene where some young perky coeds wrestle an 89 year old man ("Old Blue" aka "My boy Blue") in a tub of KY jelly, which causes him to have a heart attack and die. This is followed with a funeral scene which goes nowhere except Frank's wife decides they're not meant for each other and suggests they get divorced
* Mitch discovers Nicole's boyfriend groping a young girl, the boyfriend then intimidates Mitch into staying quiet.  Nicole visits Mitch in his office for help with a lease (because he's a real estate lawyer, remember?). When Nicole later mentions this to her boyfriend, the boyfriend tells Nicole that Mitch was the one who groped the catering girl. Mitch has coffee with Nicole who now immediately distrusts him because of what her boyfriend told her. Mitch can't explain because Darcie appears out of nowhere in her high school uniform to let Mitch know "everything's fine, dad doesn't know". Nicole now knows Mitch is a sleaze and storms off.
* Mitch returns to the house to find it boarded up. The Dean has successfully had their status turned to "not a real frat". To prove they are, they have to meet several categories:
- academic
- debate
- athletics
- school spirit
* they smash the debate despite the Dean pulling in some hard-hitting journalist - eschewing the normal structure where each side has a "for" or "against" argument, Frank just rambles on some convoluted babble which the other side wholeheartedly agrees with.
* they pass the "academic" test which was deliberately made as hard as possible by the Dean by cheating using earpieces and having some of Mitch's lawyer buddies looking up the answers online
* despite the Dean cherry-picking the least physically capable members (including the huge fat black guy) they excel at the gymnastics which makes up the "athletic" component
* for school spirit they put on a spirited dance routine followed by Frank in a mascot outfit attempting to jump through a ring of fire, which ends terribly
* Despite excelling in most areas, the Dean includes "Blue" in the results and since he's dead and can't participate, he drags the average down, causing them to fail.
* the student coucil president accosts the Dean about him not following through on his bribe (a promise to get her into a prestigious law school)
* whoops! the Dean was recorded admitting to bribing her, so is fired/shamed/tarred/feathered

In the epilogue the frat is now moving into the Dean's former home, a huge mansion which the college apparently had no other use for. Nicole apologises to Mitch because she discovered her boyfriend really is a douche, and immediately suggests they go have sex (implied by her requesting a tour of the former frat house). Mitch gets the girl and presumably this fixes everything else horrible in his life. Frank gets divorced, probably, and continues to run the frat. Beanie whose entire plot arc was wanting to reclaim his wild youth and then doing nothing about this dissolves into the background.

I feel like this movie might have had some meaning if it wasn't some extremely thin characters who go through an uncanny sequence of ultimately pointless events. It really feels like the highlight reel or even an extended trailer for three or four completely forgettable movies all mashed together. Did the actual character development end up on the cutting room floor instead of the nearly superfluous comedy scenes?

I began to wonder what I was missing and visited the imdb page for guidance, and to see what the fans had to say on the forums and saw such glowing endorsement as "It's definitely up there with 'Norbit' or 'The Master of Disguise', that's for sure."

Despite clearly being sarcastic, I think it really captures my feelings quite eloquently.

Recap: Human Centipede II: Full Sequence

If you are reading this expecting some kind of endorsement of this film, you will not find it. There are people on IMDB who believe, apparently wholeheartedly, that this was a well done movie. It somehow warranted 4.1/10 stars as an average rating, and surely not every 10/10 score was a troll review. There are people out there who liked this movie and want to see more like it.

After viewing Human Centipede II (HC2 for short), I was left with the impression that Producer/Director Tom Six made it purely as an experiment, some attempt to see what people would watch and what kind of content they would clamour for. My understanding is that HC2 took about $140,000 at the Box Office (worldwide!), and unless the players in this grotesque assault on our sensibilities worked for under $5k apiece, I have to assume it did not recoup it's costs.

So why on earth is there demand for a 3rd? Why is a third being produced? Why are people watching the progress of the third instalment with such eagerness? Tom Six has declared there won't be a fourth, and I assume that this is because he expects to be tried in the Hague for his crimes.

Don't get me wrong. I am not naturally squeamish. I mean there are certainly some things I can't tolerate, like eye trauma - something that will affect me regardless of setting and presentation, be it Hostel or Happy Tree Friends. A small mercy I can be thankful for is that eye trauma is something HC2 does not explore - as far as I can tell, the only thing.

I have seen HC1. I have seen the first 5 SAW movies. I have seen Hostel. Although these movies are classed as little more than 'torture porn', sometimes I want to be grossed out or a little shocked. Usually I watch these movies with my wife, because she is a huge horror fan. These days there is little that scares us in the traditional sense, so... she seeks out other ways to be horrified.

In one evening we watched HC1 and 2 back to back, and while I already knew the premise of HC1 (who didn't?), I still found the movie appropriately weird and gross and appealed to my morbid curiousity. The Doctor in the movie was creepy enough to be interesting, even though there is no real explanation given for his actions. He became world-famous as the foremost surgeon in separating conjoined twins, and for some reason this inspired him to conjoin people via one digestive tract.

When I was 10 years old a friend of mine once told me a story that he swears was "absolutely 100% cross my heart and hope to die" true, about a doctor who got a boy and a girl and he forced the boy to put his penis in the girl's vagina and then cut their skin so they they would heal together and stay conjoined like that forever. Considering this is the basic technique HC1 subjects would be conjoined ass-to-mouth 17 years later, I'm wondering if he had something to do with these movies. Shawn, buddy, if you remember me from Auburn North Primary, drop me a line and let me know.

At this point it might be clear I am delaying actually talking about HC2. I have done movie recaps previously and I want to be clear that while I am somewhat recapping HC2, I am doing so from memory, after one viewing, in an attempt to purge this from my mind and serve as a cautionary tale to the rest of you. I have tried to articulate that I, as an open minded person of a reasonably strong constitution, was repulsed by this movie in almost every way it is possible to be repulsed. I want to remark again that in spite of this, they are making a Human Centipede 3, which while it apparently stars the same villain of HC2, will be set in a Nazi Prison camp and involve a 500-person centipede.

If that stirs some kind of curiousity in you, keep reading, so I can explain in detail (but not too graphically) why this is a bad idea, based on my experience with HC2.

As a point of interest, HC2 is 99.9% black and white, and opinions are divided as to why. What we know is that it was shot in colour, and changed to black and white in post-production. Some people believe that this was a style choice by Tom Six, and makes the movie scarier. I am more inclined this was obviously an attempt to get by the UK censors, and believe me, there are plenty of reasons I am glad this movie was not displayed in colour.

The movie begins with scenes from HC1, being watched on a laptop by Martin, our lead player and villain, working what I assume to be the graveyard shift in a parking garage in London. He's an ugly, short, obese, mentally impaired man who has weird bug out guys and droopy lips that immediately give you the vibe that in addition to being retarded, he is also broadcasting a massive creepy vibe. For the record, Martin never has any dialogue, he only grunts and, occasionally, laughs.

So it is made clear that HC1 was in fact a work of fiction in the "world" of this movie. The actors and actresses were not harmed, they were performing in a movie. The Human Centipede is not a thing that was actually undertaken by anyone at any point.

However, Martin is obsessive. He watches the movie constantly. He keeps a large scrapbook with a Human Centipede movie poster taped to the cover, filled with sketches and photographs, and the almost hilarious note on the inside cover that declares that the movie was "100% MEDICALLY ACCURATE", something I am certain that a mentally impaired parking garage attendant is an authority on. We don't see the scrapbook until later, but I'm really only going to give this movie the most basic of rundowns, so it's not important. He also has a pet centipede that pops up occasionally.

In any case, Martin is inspired and wants to make his own centipede. In short, he captures people by sneaking up on them in the parking garage, knocking them out with a crowbar, and tossing them in the back of his van. Given that the police are never seen to come looking for any of the missing people, I am going to give the movie some credit here and assume that the events of the movie happen over a span of maybe 2-3 days.

Throughout the first half of the movie Martin receives voicemail messages from talent agencies that indicate that Martin was trying to secure the participation of the three victims of the movie by pretending he has a role for them in a Tarantino movie. As it transpires Akihiro Kitamura (the front piece) and Ashley C. Williams (middle) are not available, but Ashlynn Yennie (the end part) is available and thrilled to work with Tarantino - so in reality we have to assume she was the only person willing to associate herself with this movie. Checking IMDB it seems Ashley really did have a lot of work, so I'll give her credit. Akihiro was less busy, but I can appreciate why he would have preferred not to appear.

Ashlynn on the other hand was clearly a lot more eager for any kind of work, but things seem to have picked up for her more recently, so I guess doing this movie was a worthwhile gamble.

So we have our premise. 11 civilians and one actress are forcibly held hostage so a crazy man can bring his dream to reality. While fantasizing about his dream, Martin masturbates with sandpaper, and seeing him wrap the sandpaper around his penis and begin tugging, later urinating blood as a result, is the tamest thing this movie has to offer.

Ultimately Martin only has 10 people to make his centipede with, because he accidentally kills two of them (or so he thinks), because apparently repeatedly beating people over the head with a crowbar to keep them unconscious is not conducive to their wellbeing. By the way, one of the people he 'kills' was pregnant, so there's clearly no lines this movie won't cross.

There are some plot elements involving a creepy psychiatrist Martin has sessions with, an abusive father and upstairs neighbour, a psycho controlling mother, but none of these plot elements ultimately matter or provide any kind of justification for Martin's character or the plot, they simply provide targets to outlet Martin's perversity.

So here's the breakdown: Martin has to connect ten people ass-to-mouth, with no surgical skills, knowledge, or tools. So he assembles a kit of pliers, knives, pruning shears, a hammer, a staple gun, some rubber tubing and a funnel. Are you squirming yet?

At first he attempts to copy the procedures undertaken by the doctor in the first movie by cutting open the knees of his unconscious and ducttape-bound subjects, pulling out the ligaments, and cutting them with scissors. You can safely assume all of these procedures result in the waking up of the victims, and much gagged screaming.

The victims also have to have their teeth removed, which is where the hammer comes into play. Instead of sedating his victims and tugging them with pliers, he just smashes their teeth in. In the unrated cut this goes on far too long and was nearly my breaking point. For reasons beyond my understanding, my wife didn't turn the movie off this point (in spite of my protests) so I beat down my nausea and kept viewing. I know I was free to stop watching, I wasn't being subjected to the Ludovico method here, but I did not.

Judge me as you will.

This grisly process complete, Martin sets about preparing his victims to be joined. Now while in the original this was a delicate process involving grafting the flesh together, Martin immediately butchers this process with his first candidate, most likely severing an artery as blood flows freely from the wound and the man dies, which I am sure is a small mercy for him.

As Martin realises he cannot undertake this procedure with the same finesse as the Doctor in the movie, he compromises by lining his victims up and stapling their lips and assholes together. No surgery, just straight up stapling, reinforced with more duct tape.

Martin places some food in a bowl on the floor in front of Ashlynn (who is the lead piece of this centipede) but she refuses to eat, and cusses him out a bit, to which he responds by ripping out her tongue with pliers. After this, he forcefeeds her via funnel (and around 6 feet of rubber piping forcibly shoved down her throat) and begins his imitation of the doctor's inspection of their digestive process, trying to encourage them to shit, because of course, that's the whole point. Sadly, no amount of belly rubs will compel them to do so, so he injects liquid laxative into their behinds. Now the bottle clearly says oral laxative, but he is clearly injecting it into their rears, not their mouths, I don't care what anyone in the IMDB forums say.

This quickly take effects and farting noises serenade the gleeful Martin as he dances around, cackling as his centipede finally results in the victims explosively shitting into each others mouths. Of course because thy are not surgically grafted together, there is some significant leakage which even splashes onto the camera - we deliberately and literally have shit flying directly into our figurative eyes as a result of watching this movie and maybe I should have just opened this recap with that and saved myself some time.

Would you believe it is HERE that we get our only appearance of colour in this black and white film? Go on, guess which colour is represented.

Once the centipede has finally finished it's bowel evacuation, Martin is apparently overcome with lust. He walks up behind his 10-strong chain of stapled people and picks up a piece of barbed wire from the floor, which he diligently and firmly wraps around his penis.

You know where this is going, but I'm still going to tell you.

He gets on his knees behind the rear-most victim and proceeds to rape her, with his freshly barbed penis. Again, this scene just keeps going, making sure we have multiple angles of this urgent thrusting into his screaming victim, including one from the front end of the centipede so we see the entire writhing mass of bodies in front of Martin as he pounds away.

So this reaches it's conclusion and Martin is slumped over his victim, I suppose enjoying the bliss of the afterglow and pride in his accomplishment, when suddenly the pregnant woman wakes up under a sheet where Martin had deposited her in the corner after she apparently 'died' earlier. She runs screaming from the room, Martin slow to react... and of course her water breaks, leaving her waddling down a corridor with a steady stream of fluid leaving a trail behind her.

She makes it outside and gets into a car left behind by one of Martin's victims, the landlord for the property he is using, and the keys are still inside, so she's home free right?

Well Martin is right behind her and starts banging on the windows, and she's screaming and... oh, she gives birth there in the footwell of the driver's seat, treating us to a shot from her POV so we can see the baby sliding out of her from above. Now I thought after all this maybe it would be stillborn, but I hadn't really begun to formulate these expectations given that I genuinely thought we'd seen the last of the pregnant woman until 30 seconds earlier. In any case, the baby is presumably meant to be alive at this point, because they have dubbed in sound effects of a baby's distressed crying starting up.

The woman puts the car into gear desperate to get away and presses down on the accelerator, which, of course, has the baby's head under it. We get a close shot of the baby's still-soft skull being crushed as she puts the hammer down and reverses away.

I am not making any of this up. This is something that was filmed and distributed and sold as entertainment.

Martin proceeds back inside and in his absence the centipede has broken apart in the middle and is crawling around in two halves looking for a way out. Angry and distressed by this turn of events, Martin takes out a gun and starts shooting them, one by one, starting with the victims in the back half and working his way up until he runs out of bullets.

Ashlynn at this point has managed to get to a light switch (despite still having several dead people stapled to her asshole) and turn out the lights before Martin can find something else to kill her with. The lights come back on and she smashes Martin over the head with his centipede tank, which also happened to be nearby. While he squirms on the floor, she picks up the centipede and the funnel and yes, she jams that funnel right up his ass, and drops the centipede into it.

Martin goes into a frenzy of screams and clutches his belly as presumably the centipede burrows deeper, biting him painfully along the way. At some point he kills Ashlynn by beating her head in with his crowbar, and then he leaves.

The End.

I was going to write a conclusion here, discussing what we learned from this experience, and discussing the film, but there is just nothing to discuss. People condemn toilet-humour or grossout comedies, but at least that stuff is mostly harmless and in ‘good fun’. This is grossout cranked to eleven, with no reprieve. I can’t fathom what the intention of this movie was or what kind of person Tom Six is, but if there isn’t a law enforcement agency somewhere keeping surveillance on him just in case, I’d be honestly surprised.

Review/Recap: Your Highness (2011)

I think I'm fast establishing myself as someone who enjoys bad movies - or at least trashy movies that failed to realise an otherwise promising potential.

I originally saw trailers for this movie in late 2010/early 2011 and it looked like fun. I knew it wouldn't be great, and given that it was several years after we last saw a Lord of the Rings movie in cinemas (and a couple more until we see The Hobbit) it would either bridge the gap by being an amusing take on the swords & sorcery genre, or it would simply be a poorly timed mess.

After initially seeing the trailer, the movie dropped completely and utterly off my radar. It wasn't until this weekend just past that something prompted me to wonder about "that fantasy movie with the swearing and Natalie Portman's butt".

After racking my brains for a moment I remembered the title, and tracked it down.

I'll admit I resorted to torrenting this one. It'll probably appear on Foxtel in a few months (assuming I haven't missed it) but I so seldomly watch anything on TV these days despite paying a premium for a cable service that I feel like my piracy is somehow justified. Besides, I'm in Australia. We don't have Netflix and even if we did it would probably suck.

So I torrented this movie. I torrented it in 25 minutes while aimlessly shifting in my chair and wondering if I'd ever actually watch it. Then, because I couldn't be bothered playing any video games (and my wife was deeply involved in hunting down collectibles in Alan Wake) I popped in the decrepit iPod earphones with no rubber left on them and decided to watch Your Highness.

Your Highness, despite the reviews on imdb and rotten tomatoes and the scathing whines of Gene Siskel, is not a bad movie. It's filthy, immature, and has a bunch of drug references scattered through it, but it's nowhere near the lowest order of comedy movies I've seen.

Writer/Producer Danny McBride (who also plays the lead) was also responsible for Pineapple Express, which I hated. Apparently it's great for stoners, and I'll have to take their word on that because to me Pineapple Express was a directionless pointless mess of wacky instances that failed to be tied together in any meaningful way. Structurally it kind of felt like a remake of The Big Lebowski, but it wasn't nearly as charming or interesting (for the record I didn't much care for The Big Lebowski either, but I'd never call it bad).

I frankly don't know how I'd like Pineapple Express even if I were stoned, because while I’ve gotten ripped and watched Spongebob or

Sesame Street

at 3am and laughed my ass off, at least those things justify the wacky shit that happens within the episode.

When I realised all this I did hesitated, but thought ‘no, at least this movie seems to kind of have a point to it’ - and I think the investment of my time paid off. Your Highness is a by-the-numbers fantasy story involving heroes on a quest to save a damsel in distress, they meet companions along the way, discover their true potential, etc. If this weren't so filled to the brim with swearing and sexual innuendo, it would be boring as hell.

Danny McBride plays Thadeous, a cynical layabout who is bitter about the success of and attention given to his older brother Fabious, who is a dashing hero type who is constantly going on quests - but at the same time completely unmotivated to do anything but sit around banging chambermaids and getting high. And here you'd expect this entire movie to be nothing but stoner humour, but you'd be wrong. The tendency to enjoy some marijuana is a character quirk, something we know about Thadeous, but not central to his character. He will not 'comically' seek out a high wherever possible, or have constant bouts of paranoia or the munchies. He just smokes weed and likes it and we file that information away.

At the movie's opening we see some old witches holding a young woman captive, while twin moons are in alignment overhead. Just then, some knights ride up and attack the hags – they fire magic back at them but their shields and armour are impervious to magic. They kill the witches, introduce themselves as the "Golden Knights" and rescue the woman. That's it. It's really just a 'remember this for later' moment with some narration that indicates the moons align every 100 years or so.

Naturally, the movie skips forward to "basically 100 years later", as the onscreen titles inform us. We open onto a scene where Thadeous is about to be hanged by some dwarves for consorting with the Dwarf King's wife (who for the record, is not a dwarf). Thadeous protests that he only consorted a little bit ("just the tip") which doesn't help. The executioner drops the trapdoor, but of course because this gallows was built for dwarves, Thadeous lands harmlessly on the ground with enough slack in the rope to escape. You'd think I'd have seen this joke coming, but I didn't, so this movie kind of won me over right out of the gate.

We get an animated opening credit sequence which shows a series of still frames of Thadeous and his squire Courtney fleeing from dwarves and getting into all kinds of trouble along the way. Mostly the action is implied, and it sounds like they had some pretty epic adventures on their way back to the castle.

Once the credits are done Fabious is returning from a quest, and reveals he has killed a cyclops (bringing it's head as a trophy) and rescued a fair maiden whom he intends to marry, named Belladonna (played by Zooey Deschanel). I will agree with general consensus that Deschanel is wasted in this role - Belladonna adds very little to the storyline, she is little more than a prop that occasionally delivers some out of place lines to remind us that she has been isolated from regular society and is therefore somewhat naive. Since this naivete is strictly played for laughs on perhaps two occasions and has no impact on the plot or story, they could have gone with an unknown here and saved some money. Not that I'm unhappy to see Deschanel, I think she's great. Just... wasted here. There's a dinner scene in the first ten minutes where Belladonna tries to comb her hair with a fork. This is the material she has to work with.

Thadeous has a chip on his shoulder about how everyone adores his brother, and gets a lecture from his father about how useless he is. And frankly, as the second son and therefore in little danger of ever being king, it's not like he serves a purpose anyway. Maybe the old man could cut him some slack.

Thadeous wanders off and talks himself up, waving a sword around in a training room (very poorly), but assures himself he could be great if he wanted. There's a little exposition with Thadeous' squire Courtney, who's your typical scrawny buttmonkey squire type with a shitty haircut. Basically, it reinforces that Thadeous acts useless because he feels useless.

Fabious comes by and gives Thadeous a big pep talk, and reinforces what a great guy he is. He's blind to Thadeous' faults and has a true brotherly love for him. He perks Thadeous up by convincing him to be his best man, assuring him that the best man gets to finger the bridesmaids, in a tradition that I'm pretty sure is alive and well today.

We skip forward to the day of the wedding (or maybe the wedding is literally the next day), Thadeous in powdered wig and makeup heading to the ceremony when he overhears two of Fabious' knights complaining about how worthless Thadeous is, one in particular complaining that he gave his hand in battle (replaced by a sweet looking mechanical gauntlet) and yet he wasn't asked to be the best man. The character with the mechanical hand is Boremont, Fabious' second in the "Knights Elite", and played by Damian Lewis who you might otherwise know as Charlie from the TV series Life, or Nicholas from the TV series Homeland. For the record, the other Knight is named Thundarian.

Of course, overhearing people saying mean things sends the petulant Thadeous away, refusing to attend the ceremony without a word to his brother. At the ceremony, the King tells Fabious to forget Thadeous and get on with the ceremony with another best man. At this Boremont steps forward but the king tips Julie to fill in the (a weasely-looking, homely old man who acts as manservant to Fabious and the Knights Elite), much to Boremont's disdain.

Meanwhile, Courtney has gone to find Thadeous and bring him back for the wedding. He's sitting by a river smoking pipes with some "goblins" which really just seem to be really dirty people with tangled hair. Eh. Close enough. Courtney eventually convinces Thadeous to return to the castle

After a brief song and dance (which I'm going to be honest, I completely tuned out of) with Fabious and Belladonna, they prepare to be wed. At that moment, we meet our main antagonist, a powerful sorceror named Lazar. He informs us that Belladonna was actually his prisoner since she was a young girl, he was keeping her 'pure'  for himself until the next eclipse of the twin moons, because of some ceremony he needs to perform that requires a virgin, and now he’s taking her back.

This is when they drop the precision F-Bomb that sold me on the trailer.

Fabious: And how do you intend to do that?

Lazar: Magic…

*cracks neck*

Motherfucker.

Magic happens, Lazar grabs Belladonna and is stabbed through the chest by Fabious, who laughs it off because regular mortal weapons don't hurt him. I think it's actually an old Dungeons & Dragons thing that wizards can't be hurt by edged weapons. Or maybe I made that up.

Lazar summons his "mothers", an old witch who can split into three witches for reasons that are never really explained. The Knights Elite get their butts kicked by more magic. Fabious lunges at Lazar but Lazar casts a spell that makes him move in extreme slo-mo. Lazar then grabs Belladonna again and teleports out of there with his mothers. Fabious returns to normal speed and falls uselessly to the floor.

Now I'm only skimming over the things that happen but I want to point out here that this really was a well done (if rather cheesy) action sequence. The pacing was good, the effects were good, the camerawork was good. It really wouldn't be out of place in a non-comedy. So... it was good. I just wanted to point that out.

Thadeous returns with Courtney after everything is over, and Fabious asks him to join him on a quest to find a way to defeat Lazar and rescue Belladonna. Naturally, Thadeous refuses the call, because that's what heroes do. It’s a common trope of the hero’s journey. Eventually he gets bossed into it by the king, and agrees to tag along.

We briefly get a scene where Thadeous is sitting in a carriage with Courtney, complaining, and then the carries arrive at some ruins. Apparently there is a wise old sage living here that Fabious gets advice from, and he wants Thadeous to join him. Thadeous complains some more but agrees. Julie takes a moment to rub into Boremont that he (Boremont) used to go with Fabious to see the sage. I don't want to ruin anything but I think anyone would be able to see the foreshadowing here. They're plainly setting this up for Boremont to turn out to be evil later.

After a brief COMEDY! moment where Thadeous insists on wearing full platemail on a simple errand and falls down some stairs, we visit the sage's hovel. The sage is an odd creature, half lizard half man with a kind of jellyfish scalp that pulsates and glows. He's also smoking from a pipe. He's also a pervert.

Before he will help Fabious he demands a kiss from each of them. Thadeous is rather incredulous at this but Fabious complies, because this is all part of questing. He also reveals that this has been going on since he was a little boy (!), when they used to take their shirts off and jump on the bed. Ok.

Temporarily satisfied with the kiss, he gets Fabious and Thadeous to smoke from his pipe, which causes Fabious to freak out and have dark visions. Thadeous, the experienced smoker, tells Fabious he needs to "handle his shit".

During this scene I was kind of hoping that we would now discover that this is what questing actually is in the world of this movie - filled with all the kind of shit Thadeous enjoys like drugs and sex and so forth, and he would have a sudden realization that all Fabious really does is go out into the woods to get high with his friends, and he's been avoiding questing all this time for no reason. This doesn't turn out to be the case (except in this one scene, anyway) and it's probably for the best, because that would probably be a really lame movie. This is why I don't work in Hollywood.

Anyway, the sage interprets Fabious’ “dark visions” and gives Fabious a magic compass that will point them to the Sword of Unicorn, the only weapon that can defeat Lazar. He then gives Fabious a riddle, which is actually a thinly veiled allusion that he wants a handjob. Fabious, who is starting to come across as a bit of a dimwit, happily complies, because that's just part of "questing". Thankfully, we cut away as Fabious urges Thadeous to “tickle the balls while I pinch the tip”.

Later on that evening Knights Elite have made camp and they slice open an animal carcass that they’ve presumably hunted and goad Thadeous into taking a bite of the animal’s heart. Of course as soon as he does, they laugh at him, which sends him running off into the woods like a little girl. Fabious chases him down, and assures him the hazing is over, the Knights Elite now know he’s “not to be fucked with”.

Elsewhere, Courtney is taking a piss behind a tree while Julie pulls a tooth from his mouth and uses it to open some kind of portal, through which we see Lazar’s face. He warns Lazar about Fabious and Thadeous, so Lazar orders Julie to deal with them. Courtney runs and tells Thadeous and Fabious and thankfully subverting the whole ‘faithful servant/blindly loyal master’ stereotype Fabious believes Courtney and they question Julie – Julie idiotically decides to run instead of trying to deny anything, and runs into one of the tents where he is seized by Boremont.

Incidentally, Julie’s robe is stripped off while he’s running and it’s revealed he has no dick. He’s smooth as a Ken doll. I guess this was done purely for visual impact and so they could call him dickless, because there’s no reason for this whatsoever and never becomes relevant in any way. Hey! I’m not saying this is high comedy, I’m just saying it’s not as bad as people say!

Fabious tells Boremont about Julie consorting with Lazar, to which Boremont unsurprisingly reveals he and the other Knights have been working with Lazar all along – which raises a few questions:

Firstly, how long? Always? If so, why have they been pretending to serve Fabious all these years when Fabious only recently crossed Lazar? If they only joined Lazar recently, why? It can’t be purely because Boremont got passed over as best man at Fabious’ wedding – and if he was working for Lazar then, why did he even want to be best man if he knew that Lazar was going to attack and re-kidnap Belladonna anyway? I think this is kind of explained later on, but it was kind of perplexing at the time.

Anyway, Thadeous and Fabious and Courtney jump into a carriage and flee from the Knights (there are four of these guys by the way, and since I only know Boremont and Thundarian by name, I will make up names for the other two. One of them has a weird puffy blonde afro and looks kind of crosseyed, so let’s call him Strangelook. The other guy is completely unremarkable by comparison, so I’ll call him Nondescripto.

So, the Knights are chasing Thad, Fab and Courtney when all of a sudden, fucking Samurai in chariots out of NOWHERE. At first I thought the movie was making a joke, by replacing the Knights with blatantly obvious Asian stunt doubles but no, apparently these Samurai bandits just happened to decide to ambush the carriage when the carriage already had the Knights in hot pursuit. Even though I just watched two men give a handjob to a blue lizardman with a jellyfish head, THIS was the first moment in the movie where I sat back and said “what the fuck”.

(On repeat viewing I note that these guys actually do appear in the background of a couple of other scenes so while they get no lines or attention they appear to be either members of the Knights Elite or possibly servants of some kind. Either way, their appearance is not as random as I have suggested previously. - Kermi)

So… the samurai-looking guys (aka expendible extras) jump on the carriage which has Fabious driving and Courtney and Thadeous inside. Fabious strangles one of the Samurai with a whip (or something) and throws him off, which causes him to pass under the carriage and be dragged behind to be acknowledged later. Meanwhile the other one (who has long hair) is climbing in the back window of the carriage being kicked at by the inept Courtney and Thadeous who are unarmed.

Thankfully Boremont throws a knife at the carriage (for some reason) and it embeds itself in the wood. Courtney grabs it while Thadeous pulls the samurai’s hair, and accidentally scalps him. Well, it gets the desired result, which is to make the samurai scream and fall off the carriage. Meanwhile, the Knights have caught up.

Boremont jumps on the front of the carriage with Fabious and they struggle before falling off. Fabious and Boremont tumble into the short-hair Samurai who is still being dragged behind the carriage and amazingly is still alive. Boremont doesn’t manage to hang on, Fabious does, and climbs back onto the carriage while Thadeous and Courtney struggle with Nondescripto. They manage to fight him off and climb up onto the driver’s seat of the carriage with Fabious, when suddenly they see Thundarian and Strangelook standing on an overhanging tree branch ahead of them.

Not only does this make no sense, since this chase has been going at high speed in a straight line for some time (basically, how did they even get ahead that far), but it really adds nothing to the scene because the fall uselessly through the roof of the carriage, Fabious, Thadeous and Courtney jump onto the horses and cut the horses free of the carriage which them flips and crashes. I thought maybe they were going to do a “wooden carriage explodes for no reason” joke but they didn’t, and all the Knights are intact and uninjured next time we see them (you didn’t think that was the last we saw of them, did you)?

Later we’re in the middle of the woods and Fabious releases the horses to throw the Knights off their trail. Thadeous complains about having to “walk all the way home” but is dismayed to hear the quest continues.

Oh. I forgot something kind of important which I can’t be bothered going back to edit in. Fabious has a mechanical pet bird named Simon, who is intelligent enough to understand human speech. It also “talks” in a chattery mechnical way, which it seems people can understand, at least enough to get the basic gist of whatever it’s trying to communicate. It’s seldom important but is kind of a plot point later. Thadeous hates Simon and it’s never explained why, but probably due to his jealousy of Fabious. Earlier on he got his own pet companion as a counterpart to Simon, an iguana named Steve that does nothing. It’s seen once in the camp scene earlier, and will be seen once again later.

It’s referenced here because Thadeous realises they left Steve behind and demands Fabious get rid of Simon so they’re equal. Fabious points out Thadeous still has Courtney, though Thadeous would happily get rid of Courtney to be rid of Simon too. Courtney is surprisingly unperturbed by this, which cements him as a complete doormat if that wasn't alreeady apparent.

Anyway, Fabious is sending Simon away anyway, to tell the King what’s happened and request an army to come help fight Lazar since the Knights turned traitor. They use the compass which channels sunlight into a needle (which is a totally cool idea) and begin following it.

We cut back to the Knights and Julie where Strangelook is ‘tracking’. Basically he’s tasting blades of grass. Now people say there’s toilet/grossout humour in this movie but I’m going to disagree. Grossout humour is where you put stuff in that’s gross so it’s not really funny, but people are kind of tricked into thinking it’s funny because they’re embarrassed, like the jizzcup bit from American Pie, or the shit/coffee bit from Austin Powers 2.

Now here, Strangelook eats a blade of grass and says “one of them pissed here”. That’s not gross. That’s an experienced tracker at work. This is not nearly gross enough to qualify as grossout. I didn’t get grossed out, and it wasn’t particularly funny. It was just a thing that happened. Anyway, this reveals our heroes are walking into a forest controlled by someone called “Mateetee”, and predict their certain doom.

In the next scene our heroes are in the woods and Thadeous is expressing his doubts that Fabious’ “pure” bride to be is going to be so pure once they get to her. Fabious refuses to consider the possibility that Lazar will “get her cookies” first. Fabious starts to get agitated but Thadeous gets distracted by a nearly naked women in white body paint. She seems to be beckoning him, and not finding this at all suspect, he follows after her. We get a brief shot of him chasing her off into the woods. Suddenly, there’s nearly-nude white body painted women everywhere and our heroes are captured.

In the next shot, our heroes and three others (one mysteriously masked figure and two figurative redshirts) are being forced into a pen that is clearly a small arena. There’s white body painted people all around banging on the sides of the cage. A big fat guy approaches a throne above the arena on one side flanked by an escort of eight or so naked women. This is apparently Mateetee. Mateetee gets a lot of scenery-chewing screen time in the next few minutes, but this is probably mainly because they paid for a lot of topless women and wanted to maximise their investment.

So, our heroes have to fight Mateetee’s champion. A big burly warrior type who’s let into the ring. One of the redshirts tries to charge the warrior, but is effortlessly taken out. Then Fabious has a go, and manages to defeat the warrior after a brief duel, demanding their freedom. Of course, that’s not all there is to it. Mateetee’s servants bring him a big vat of yellow gunk, which looks like a cross between mustard and fat, which he eagerly sinks his hand into. My biggest concern right now was that he was going to eat it, but what actually happens is a five-headed hydra rises out of the ground in the arena.

Fabious bravely attacks the hydra but is bitten on the leg and paralysed, begging Thadeous to suck out the poison. Of course it’s upper thigh and Thadeous refuses, trying to push Fabious’ head down so he can suck himself, etc. Eventually Courtney does it. This joke was done better in City Slickers, but it works ok here too since he actually was bitten (instead of sitting on a cactus) and the imminent threat of the hydra is right there so the urgency doesn't ultimately amount to nothing.

Oh, the hydra also spits acid, which claims the life of our remaining redshirt (remember him?).

While this is going on the mysterious masked stranger flips into action and starts attacking the hydra, severing one of the “heads”. In case you didn’t see this coming, Mateetee screams in pain and pulls his hand out of the pot to reveal he has just lost a finger. This makes the hydra retreat also, which gives our heroes some breathing room. Courtney has apparently finished sucking Fabious’ poison because he spits out some white gunk (Ha!) and they get up and run away, Fabious instantly able to move easily again.

Mateetee sticks his hand back in the pot and attacks with renewed vigour, but the masked stranger easily cuts off three of the remaining four heads. Guess which ‘head’ is remaining when Mateetee pulls his hand out of the pot again? Yep. Mateetee flips our heroes the grisliest bird ever.

The stranger now unmasks themselves and bam, finally, Natalie Portman. Her character’s name is Isabel, and she reveals that Mateetee rounded up and killed her family, and she is here to avenge them.

Mateetee starts to rant about how they’ll pay for this, but Isabel just hurls a spear at him, and he falls face first into the vat. The heroes escape as the entire floor of the arena turns into a face, which screams in pain then goes silent. Again, cool fight, cool effects, well paced, with a few jokes to keep the momentum going. What’s wrong with that? Without the jokes it’d still be a good fight, but less interesting.

So now our heroes are following Isabel, thanking her for “helping”, which is manspeak for “you saved our lives”. Thadeous, eager to impress, begins to tell Isabel about their quest but Fabious interrupts and explains the law of the road – you never reveal your mission because you never know who might be working against you. Wow, it just got dark. Must be another foreshadow passing through the scene. Despite Thadeous’ repulsive attempts at flirtation, Isabel agrees that they can walk in the same direction as her.

We cut to another scene from the trailer where Thadeous is watching Nata- I mean, Isabel get undressed to bathe. Fabious mocks him for perving, Thadeous unconvincingly insists he’s only watching for her safety. She sees them and Thadeous panics, telling Fabious to freeze. They do, because nearly naked women are a lot like T-Rexes. In that men mistakenly believe their sight is based on movement, which is completely incorrect.

Isabel ignores them and dives into the water in her underwear, thankfully subverting another annoying cliché where she can’t handle a little peeping and gets mad at them like in every movie/TV show/anime ever. I mean, men shouldn’t peep at women changing, I understand that. It’s just annoying when we have to devote screentime to resolving it. Here, we move past it, and I appreciate that.

Apparently Natalie Portman didn’t really want to do this movie and considering how poorly it did at the box office I guess I don’t blame her, but I think she fits in really well. If I met her and had to say something nice to her, I’d probably say “you were great in Your Highness” and she’d get all pissy because she only signed on because Black Swan was having trouble getting greenlit and she needed money to help finance it. In all fairness though, Black Swan was really good and you should see it (despite it not having as much lesbian sex with Mila Kunis in it as the trailer made you think).

The heroes make camp and Fabious decides to go collect firewood with Courtney to give Thadeous some alone time with Isabel. Thadeous completely fails to impress Isabel so he starts leaking info about their quest in a last ditch effort to sleep with her. He tells her about the only weapon that can defeat Lazar, and the magic compass which is the only way to find said weapon. Isabel does a very poor job of concealing her interest in these objects, and as always you can’t blame the actress for broadcasting this – I’m sure she was told to act exactly like that so the audience would be suspicious and feel smart when she steals the compass later.

Oops, did I say too much?

Thadeous fails to bang Isabel, everyone goes to sleep and the next morning when they wake up the compass is gone. Fabious gets mad at Thadeous for the first time (despite how much of a douchebag he’s been the whole goddamn movie) because now all hope for rescuing Belladonna is lost (remember her?). At a loss for anything else to do they walk to the next town, Fabious hoping they’ll be able to figure something out when the army catches up to them.

Incidentally there’s the odd scene here and there with Lazar talking to Belladonna but they’re not particularly interesting and while there’s some "funny" dialogue these scenes don’t add a lot to the story and are I guess only there to remind us about Belladonna and Lazar while the movie’s busy introducing Isabel. I guess it balances out well but they’re barely worth mentioning.

When the heroes get to a town Fabious goes off to do some non-specific investigating. Thadeous and Courtney go to a tavern where, surprise, they see Isabel. Catching Isabel unawares, Thadeous grabs Isabel from behind and holds her at knifepoint. This leads to this exchange:

Isabel: Is that your cock?

Thadeous: Ha! ‘Tis a knife! But I will gladly penetrate you with it.

which I thought was rather good.

Meanwhile Fabious has run into some old friends, the Knights Elite who reveal they intercepted Simon and upend a sack, the broken down bird tumbling out – so there’s not going to be any backup. Fabious begins to fight with the Knights in a bid to escape, but it’s four on one, so… tough going.

Thadeous and Isabel sit down together and Isabel says the compass doesn’t work – Thadeous unwittingly says she probably didn’t try it in sunlight, then immediately regrets giving away that tidbit. Isabel and Thadeous start a brawl where Thadeous thoroughly gets his butt kicked (he does punch Isabel once but immediately does that “oh my god, I hit a women” reaction where he recoils in horror, which of course results in her hitting him back, harder, and mopping the floor with him). At one point Courtney tackles Isabel and grapples with her but she easily shakes him off. Thadeous at one point is thrown into a big beefy Conan the Barbarian type and while not significant now, you’ll see this guy again.

We cut back to Fabious fighting the knights, and he’s fighting well but is eventually overwhelmed.

Meanwhile with Courtney and Thadeous down, Isabel has escaped. Thadeous starts to despair but Courtney reveals he lifted the compass when he tackled her – apparently he was once kept as a sex slave by gypsies and learned a few things about sleight of hand. Well. Ok then. Just as they rejoice they see the Knights Elite carrying an unconscious Fabious and hide.

Courtney suggests they run but Thadeous finally starts showing a noble side and swears he will continue the quest and rescue his brother – first, they must find the Sword of Unicorn (remember that?).

On the road the next morning they’re ambushed by Isabel who naturally wants the compass back. She explains she is descended from the Golden Knights (remember them?). Her brothers and father were all Knights and were killed by Lazar (I thought Mateetee killed them?). She crafted her arm band (a full length forearm bracer) from their shields as a reminder.

Thadeous explains they’re out to kill Lazar too, and that’s why they need the sword. Didn’t he already explain this? It was already obvious from when they first met that they should be working together, so there’s no reason she should’ve taken the compass to begin with. Sigh. They travel together and come to a cave. There’s some writing in the cave which is in Dwarfish, and Isabel can’t read it. Courtney points out that Thadeous has some familiarity with dwarves (remember that, from all the way back before the opening credits? I honestly didn’t at first, I thought Courtney was making shit up to help Thadeous impress Isabel).

Anyway, Thadeous says the writing is a riddle: “what got you here will get you there”, which he dismisses as nonsense. Isabel realizes the compass got them here so… she finds a convenient hole the compass fits into which opens a hidden passage into a labyrinth. Naturally, where there’s a labyrinth there’s a minotaur. Or David Bowie. But more often, a minotaur.

 Everyone runs in different directions. Isabel comes across the minotaur and fires and arrow into it’s chest, but it doesn’t kill it, or much slow it down at all. She runs some more.

Meanwhile, Thadeous has stumbled into a room and passes through a magic barrier. What purpose the barrier serves is unclear, and never alluded to again, but there’s a definite ripple effect in the air as he enters the room. The room has a unicorn skeleton in it, or maybe it’s just a rock with a unicorn horn stuck to it. Anyway, Thadeous tugs on the horn and pulls out what seems to be a spine.

Apparently he’s as unimpressed as I am because he bangs it on the stone and most of the bones fall away to reveal a gleaming (but still kind of cheap looking) sword. I can tell it’s supposed to be impressive though, so I’ll assume it’s the real thing and not a fakeout. Then the wall starts talking to him, and tells him only a true hero can take the sword. He immediately says he’s NOT a true hero and offers to put it down and walk away.

The wall opens a portal showing his home, and visions of him as king, powerful, with all the wine, weed and women he could ever want, all he has to do is walk through. He looks greedily into the portal…

Then we cut to Courtney being assraped by the minotaur. Seriously. I mean I guess it’s probably just dryhumping because Courtney seems to be coping rather well, but then again he did used to be a sex slave, right? Isabel comes along and notches another arrow, which causes the minotaur to stop humping Courtney and approach Isabel, and you can clearly see it’s cock and balls swinging from side to side as it walks towards her. Now I know how my wife feels when she seems me stepping out of the shower.

Then swish, minotaur gets stabbed like a bitch. Thadeous proudly strides forward and announces he found the sword, and he came back for them. Courtney asks “you were going to leave?!” which Thadeous brushes off and it’s never touched upon again. No discussion of him overcoming his temptation for a greater good, not even any mention of the talking wall or the portal. I think an opportunity was missed here, but hey, I’m not the one making movies, so maybe I’m wrong.

Then Thadeous starts using the sword to saw at one of the minotaur’s horns.

Isabel: What are you doing?

Thadeous: I’m taking a horn as a trophy.

Isabel: You can’t cut the horn of a minotaur, everyone knows that.

Thadeous: Hmm…

If you guessed that in the next scene Thadeous has a minotaur penis on a string which he’s wearing around his neck, award yourself five points. If you guessed that it stays there for the rest of the movie, award yourself twenty points. Yep, Danny McBride was really committed to this minotaur penis bit, you have to give him that.

Ok, we’re on the home stretch. Thadeous is determined to rescue his brother but they need help quickly, so it’s montage time. They go back to the village and we see Thadeous shaking hands with the Conanesque guy from before. Courtney finds the scrapped remains of Simon and arranges for him to be repaired. There’s a nice voiceover narration from Thadeous as he talks about righting old wrongs, making new allies, forgiving old enemies, etc. It’s actually an ok moment.

So, they now have Simon fixed up and the barbarian dude traveling with them, and they’re all kitted out for the final battle. They sneak into Lazar’s tower and Thadeous, channeling his old self, suggest someone else lead the way because he did all the work with the sword & minotaur. Conanesque takes point, immediately triggers a trap that stabs him through the gut, and he dies. RIP Conanesque. We hardly knew ye.

We get a scene of Lazar taunting Fabious who’s being whipped by Julie. He’s also in some kind of harness above a spike. Lazar tells him while he’s busy penetrating Belladonna (seriously, remember her?), a servant will lower him so the spike penetrates him. As far as medieval era torture goes, Fabious is getting off pretty light. Is this supposed to be grossing me out yet?

So Lazar goes upstairs, the moons are aligning, Belladonna is struggling. Lazar is having trouble getting it up with all her shrieking so his ‘mothers’ put a spell on her to make her more docile but actually makes her act like the girl from the Exorcist. Good thing she’s restrained.

Isabel shoots the servant in the dungeon, Courtney and Thadeous get Fabious down from the harness. Fabious calls to Simon but Simon lands on Thadeous, much to Fabious’ amazement. Thadeous then humbly hands over the sword to Fabious and while I’m all about subverting clichés, I think this goes too far. There is no issue whatsoever with the sword being handed over after Thadeous did all the work proving himself as the “true hero”. I feel like at LEAST, Fabious should have refused or been reluctant to take the sword from Thadeous.

Well, whatever.

I’m going to rush through this last bit because it’s all fighty fighty and describing fight scenes is tedious.

Lazar is trying to fuck Belladonna but he can’t get it up, claiming he’s just not attracted to her. Seriously man, Zooey Deschanel chained to a bed and you can’t get it up? Maybe they were implying Lazar is gay or something, but I’m sure there’s a lot of gay dudes who’d still be able to get it up for Zooey Deschanel.

Our heroes rush up the stairs and encounter the Knights Elite. Fabious duels with Boremont and severs his prosthetic arm (which has a pop-out blade) then runs him through with it. Dying, Boremont reveals he turned on Fabious because he was going to marry Belladonna, and he always “loved him”.

Fabious: You mean as a knight loves his brother knight?

Boremont: No, as a man loves another man.

Fabious: …oh.

After which Boremont dies. Awkwaaaaard.

Thadeous tries to free Belladonna, and she responds by trying to suck the minotaur cock hanging from his nick. Because she’s possessed to be super horny, I guess. Lazar blasts him away and tries to rape Belladonna some more, but still can’t get it up.

Isabel fights the witches, repelling their magic with her armband (forged from the shields of her brothers, the Golden Knights, in case you forgot), and then kicks them – she literally kicks the third one into the second one, making them merge, the then second into the first, which she then kills. So I guess they can only be killed when they’re unseperated? As I said at the beginning of this review, it’s never explained.

Fabious confronts Lazar, who laughs because he can’t be harmed by mortal weapons. Fabious reveals it’s the Sword of Unicorn and Lazar just stands there and spends a good five seconds looking scared before Fabious stabs him, instead of trying to defend himself or something.

Lazar explodes. They rescue Belladonna.

Afterwards Isabel parts company with the heroes, saying she has other quests to fulfill. Thadeous tries to offer her the minotaur penis as a reminder of him, but understandably she declines. She leaves. They go home. Fabious and Belladonna marry. The King is proud of Thadeous for the first time ever. Thadeous goes to bed and prepares to jerk off when Fabious bursts in to announce he went on a “mini-quest” to rescue Steve the iguana (remember him)?

After Fabious leaves, Thadeous goes to put Steve in the corner while he “strums his filthies” and at that moment Isabel walks in. she’s done with her quest, but has another – she opens her robe to reveal her metal thong is actually a chastity belt, placed on her by an evil witch, and requests Thadeous’ help to go slay the witch and break the curse.

Thadeous isn’t much up for more questing and looks set to decline, but changes his mind when Isabel suggests the alternative is to “stay in and just snuggle”.

The End.

Apparently this movie was intended to have a sequel if it did well enough (it didn’t), so I don’t know if this was supposed to be a setup for that or not. Could they make a whole movie out of hunting down a witch to remove a cursed chastity belt? Possibly, maybe. Then again I find it unlikely Natalie Portman would sign on for a sequel so it’s more likely she’d be given the same longevity as a Bond girl and disappear between films to be replaced by a new love interest.

All in all, I don’t think this was at all a bad movie – there was real character growth, and you could relate to the characters for the most part, as they were driven by a combination of noble and personal motivations, and reacted realistically to messed up situations. I know that was more or less the gimmick, but in so many movies when weird shit happens people seldom step back and say “well what the fuck was that?” That’s the part of this movie I was most looking forward to based on the trailers, and that it delivered in spades. Were my expectations set too low? I prefer to say my expectations were realistic.

At the very least, the movie didn’t bore me. That’s the worst crime a movie can commit, when the events become tedious or dull or when a comedy is so plainly unfunny that there is no value in watching it at all. This was never the case here and while it never produced any laugh out loud moments for me, very few movies do.

Movie Recap: Hackers (1995)

Back in 1995 the internet was new and wild, and as home PCs became increasingly common (and even mainstream, no longer the domain of the nerdy) we as a society developed a bunch of new phobias to go along with them. For awhile, the computer was the magic wand, the tricorder, the sonic screwdriver - the MacGuffin that made all things possible. The new villain and/or hero of the cyber age wasn't the man with the biggest gun or the quickest draw, but the one who was the most computer-savvy, who had the best hardware, who was capable of harnessing the most megabits and twisting them to his purposes.

Even in a decade responsible for The Net, a cyber-crime identity-theft thriller starring Sandra Bullock, Hackers was still considered laughable by audiences for technical inaccuracy, which is a shame because once you put all that computer stuff aside it's actually quite good.

Ok, no it isn't. I'm biased. I love this movie. I have probably watched it more than fifty times. I recorded it off the TV onto a blank VHS tape and used to just leave the tape in there. During the summer holidays at the end of 1999, my morning routine involved walking downstairs, turning on the TV, and pressing Play on the VCR. The tape would roll, and the movie would play in the background while I browed the internet or played computer games. I effectively have this movie memorised. Reflecting on this paragraph, maybe I am admitting too much about my late teens.

What I like about Hackers is the design and interplay of the characters. Dade "Zerocool" Murphy (played by Jonny Lee Miller) is the new kid at school, hacker prodigy who is tied up in a battle he didn't start, but is empowered by the knowledge that he can fight a man's battle because the electronic playing field is level.

Eugene "The Plague" Belford (Fisher Stevens, probably best known for his recurring role as George Minkowski in Lost) is almost cartoonish villain, uncompromisingly determined with no ounce of empathy or sympathy - this I actually consider to be a bold vision of the future, because this is how people behave on the internet. It's a fantastic piece of metahumour that took over a decade to really pay off, but really, bravo.

Although most of our characters share screentime pretty equally, these are our main players, so... on with the recap!

The movie opens on grainy footage of a suburban neighbourhood, a dog barking in slow motion, with a slight echo effect. I'm not sure if this was supposed to feel like stock footage or if it was purely done for dramatic effect. As the film progresses we see uniformed men with assault rifles charging across the lawn while confused residents of the neighbourhood look on, pausing in the middle of riding their bikes and watering their gardens as the men close in on a house.

Abruptly, we switch to colour and the film speeds back up to normal as one of the agents kicks in the door, scaring the hell out of a middle-aged woman in the middle of doing the dishes. Orders are barked: "Upstairs!" as the men ignore the woman and her pleas for information. Who are these men, what are they doing? They charge upstairs and pause outside another door before kicking it in.

We cut to a courtroom, stern faced persons gazing up at the judge as he recaps the crime - Dade Murphy, aka "Zerocool", released a computer virus that was responsible for crashing 1507 systems in a single day - including Wall Street trading systems. The camera pans across the faces and then suddenly all we see is see the top part of a neat blond haircut. The camera pans down to show us our master criminal - an 11 year old boy. This is Dade, child genius, extreme hacker, pre-teen.

I was 12 in 1995 and while I didn't see this movie until 1997, I considered this entirely believable. Sure, I was no master hacker in ‘95, but I sure knew more about computers than my parents or anyone older than me (at the time I had never met the people who, you know, designed, built and programmed computers and back in 1995 there were a lot of offices that weren't extensively using them yet. Amazing.)

The judge fines the Murphy family $30,000 and bans Dade from using a computer or touch-tone telephone until the day of his 18th birthday. Another side note, this whole touch-tone phone thing baffled me until it was expanded on later in the movie and I'm assuming it was supposed to - it's a sleeper line for later. I wonder how many non-experts knew about phreaking back in '95? I didn't, but I was a kid in high school, and not a real hacker. Maybe that made me this movie's ideal audience.

We cut forward, I'm assuming to the present day (present for 1995 anyway). We see an older Dade shades messing around with a computer which I don't recognise at all. It could have been custom built by the prop master for all I know. It could be a really old Apple, pre IIe era, and maybe that's what they used to dress it up. Since it soon becomes apparent that this is not in any way a real computer and the functions it performs are not indicative of real functions I guess it's not really relevant what this magic box really is.

His mother knocks on the closed door to his bedroom and tells him not to stay up all night, wishing him a happy birthday. You see, our little Dade is all growed up and plans to stretch his computing legs.

Dade makes a phone call and we briefly get a brief establishing shot of a small office building, which in this case is a TV studio called "OTV". The phone call is to a security guard, to whom Dade introduced himself as 'Eddie Vedder' from accounting. A bunch of pseudo-technobabble follows and while on one hand I appreciate that the writers wanted to make it clear that Dade is spewing a bunch of absolute nonsense, I have difficulty believing that a security guard would be baffled by a line as transparent as "My B.L.T. drive has gone A.W.O.L.".

Another side note: I was never a fan of Pearl Jam, and didn't get the Eddie Vedder joke until around 2005 - old people are stupid and on top of not understanding computer jargon, they also know nothing about popular music! Ha!

Communicating almost exclusively through grunts and nervous chuckles as Dade rambles on about Mr. Kawasaki asking him to commit hari-kari, the security guard is easily coaxed into reading out some numbers off a nearby modem, which seems to just be the phone number to dial into the modem.

So Dade has a phone number for the studio which happens to be right near a security guard. That makes sense, because we can assume that maybe the main line redirects to the security office after hours. But the modem is sitting there too, in arm's reach? And Dade just knew it would be there. So the modem that will give someone access to the internal network is just kind of sitting there? Seems like a pretty vital piece of equipment. One you'd normally find in a server room or something.

I also assume there are multiple modems and since there's no clear modem pool, they're probably scattered around the building like keys in an old video game. Seeing as how back in the days of dialup a modem would tie up a phone line pretty much entirely, there have to be multiple lines in based on what happens next.

Tapping away at his computer, Dade seizes control of OTV's archive/broadcasting system and fixes it so that he gets to watch The Outer Limits by manipulating a robot arm to pluck a tape from a shelf and manually insert it into a VCR. How did he know how to control the tape archive remotely? How did he know how to find the Outer Limits tape in a completely alien system? I don't know if we're just supposed to assume that this is a straightforward process, or an example of Dade's natural brilliance at computery stuff.

The veracity of hacking examples only gets more questionable from here.

As Dade toasts the episode of the Outer Limits with a soda and chuckles to himself, there's a noise reminiscent of but not quite an interrupting record scratch like they play in comedy movie trailers to indicate something unexpected has happened. It's a distorted digital noise that makes me wonder if they played a record scratch backwards on slow speed.

Something has seized control of his computer and a glowing message demands to know his identity - he begins to respond with the handle "Zerocool" but realises that name has his history attached to it and changes it to “Crash Override”. The intruder responds that they, "Acid Burn", are the master of this domain and that Dade will now be 'expunged'. If this was supposed to read like bad high school level prose (and there's every reason to assume that) then mission accomplished, Hackers. Excellent work.

What ensues is one of the most farcical references to computers and hacking that I think has ever appeared in a movie. This is the point that you have to decide if you are going to disengage your brain to continue watching and enjoy this movie, or if you actually feel your intelligence has been insulted enough, and it's now time for you to switch off and go somewhere else. If you stay through this, you are guaranteed to enjoy yourself. I am one of those people, and I am not ashamed of that.

Dade and the mysterious hacker engage in a hacking battle of epic proportions. Brightly coloured images whirl and flicker all over Dade's screen as he mercilessly pounds his keyboard. The scene is intercut with two robot arms racing back and forth across the tape archive at OTV, ejecting and inserting tapes that are conveniently queued up to scenes from movies that appropriately represent duelling, fighting, and a plane crashing into the ground.

Dade sends a taunt to 'Acid Burn', "Mess With the Best, Die Like the Rest" which takes him roughly a minute to type into the psychedelic mess that's swirling around his monitor. The text joins the swirling mess and disappears as if being flushed down a toilet. Moments later, 'Acid Burn' retorts with a snappy "U R Terminated" and his 'computer' completely shuts down, leaving him in the dark with a stunned expression.

Now it's morning and a sleepy Dade is emerging from his room while his mother folds some laundry. She picks up the phone and pretends to talk to a third person, complaining that Dade was up all night playing with his computer "for a solid week". I assumed this was the next day after his birthday and his hacking duel, but apparently not - otherwise this line is out of place. It doesn’t really impact the plot, so let's move on. Dade's mother coyly asks Dade if he likes girls, which he reassures her he does; only none he's met have been as charming as her.

He exits into the bathroom to shower; his mother hangs up on her pretend phone call and goes into Dade's room. She immediately storms out and bangs on the bathroom door, accusing him of hooking the computer up to the phone, reminding him if he screws up again he won't get into college. Frankly, since he's 18 now, I think that would be the least of his concerns.

Later, Dade finally attends school and after submitting his transfer papers is given the grand tour by a reluctant Kate Libby, played by a young Angelina Jolie in her first film appearance. She's really cute here, and I think the costumers/make up artists did a great job giving her a look that identifies her as indistinctly non-conformist, but in a subdued enough way that we can find it believable instead of, say... stupid.

For some reason Dade flashes on Kate entering the room with a bunch of random images of lips and eyes, including a piece of pop-art. This happens a few times over the course of the movie and I'm not sure why. I assume they were going to try and make some sort of point about information overload or Dade's immersion into computers and the media and disassociation with reality, but I guess they changed their mind and left these moments in without tying them together in any meaningful way. Or maybe it was just to make sure we were really paying attention to Kate's entrance here.

Kate gives Dade a tour, pointing Dade towards various facilities. Dade does a poor job of hitting on Kate which she doesn't even appear to notice, though she does laugh when he tries to follow her into a classroom and asks if he's in her class. She answers with a very pointed "No, you're not in my class", with a very clear but not overplayed double meaning.

Someone passing by at this moment identifies Dade as a new kid and tells Kate he should know about "the pool". Kate then wryly and seemingly reluctantly informs Dade about the swimming pool on the roof of the school building. For some reason, he heads directly up there instead of going to class, a bunch of other new kids, standing around looking like nerds. Seriously, there's an Asian kid in a checkered shirt with a pocket protector.

The door swings shut behind Dade and he quickly realises that it doesn't open from the outside. With the perfect amount of resignation and frustration, he states: "No pool." No shit. Just then, it starts to rain. Later, on a dripping wet Dade is walking down the hall while Kate and a friend laugh, Kate adding that he must've found the pool. This is punctuated with another mini-clip from a black and white movie featuring a woman being strangled.

We cut to a computer science class and while the teacher in the background introduces himself as a substitute teacher and drones on about how computers aren't toys, Dade is busy going through student records to transfer himself to Kate's English class. Another student nearby wearing a sleeveless leopard-print shirt watches apparently awed with Dade’s ability to copy paste.

Now this guy is about to become Dade's friend and looking back now, I think this guy is supposed to be gay. The clothing, the mannerisms, a subtle something in the way he talks... if he's supposed to be gay, I seriously only just noticed, which I think makes him my most favourite gay character ever. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm sick of stereotypical gay characters and yeah, I know, I just described a bunch of really stereotypical reasons why he probably is gay, but his sexuality is never actually referenced in the movie and he's never treated any differently to anyone else. He's also Mexican or something, which is even less relevant. Maybe I’m wrong about this whole thing, maybe he's just a bit flamboyant. The real point is it matters so little it took me until now to notice it.

After class, Possibly Gay Mexican chases Dade outside asking about Dade's interest in Kate, and casting aside allusions that Dade might want to bone Angelina Jolie, Dade swears he's only in it for revenge. Possibly Gay Mexican introduced himself as "Phreak", then clarifies "The Phantom Phreak", which completely fails to spark any recognition in Dade. Dade becomes distracted by a nearby basketball game as an energetic kid comes running up to Phreak, humming along on a stream of "dude dude dude dude dude dude" like a stoned motorboat until Phreak threatens to slap him. We learn the kid's name is Joey.

Dude.

Joey is distressed because he needs "a handle", becoming concerned that he won't be recognised for his efforts as a hacker until he has a handle. Phreak takes this as his cue to leave, slapping Dade with an invitation to some place called Cyberdelia as he walks away, Joey trailing behind suggesting super awesome handles for himself like "Ultralaser" or "Doctor Doom".

Around the time I saw this movie, I actually read an article on online gaming in a PC gaming magazine, and the article actually suggested you not call yourself anything attention grabbing or bragging - it's a bit stupid to go ahead and call yourself "QuakeKing" for instance because then if you suck, you look really stupid. I guess the same principle applies here. Frankly I don't know that Ultralaser is worse than Zerocool, Crash Override, Acid Burn, or Phantom Phreak, but ok, we've established Joey is a dweeb because Phreak calls Joey hopeless.

Later we discover Cyberdelia is some kind of freakishly awesome teenage hangout. Neon clashes with black light, there's a massive skate ramp/path weaving throughout the centre with people rollerblading on it. There's video games all over the place. Dade is seated with Phreak and Joey and is introduced to "Serial Killer" played by Matthew Lillard - one of my favourite minor actors. You have just enough time to reflect that Serial Killer is a clever pun since serial is also a type of computer port, but a beat later Phreak clarifies "...as in Froot Loops", so the name is in fact "Cereal Killer". The character is portrayed as something of a stoner and moocher, so I guess that makes equal sense.

Cereal has brought a satchel of books and interrupts a story Joey is in the middle of telling, but I get the impression since Joey is so hopeless that Phreak and Dade weren't all that interested anyway - Dade participates in a welcome distraction by naming each book as it's pulled out of the satchel and then identifying each one by it's purpose and nickname, up to and including "the ugly red book that won't fit on a shelf". This seems to satisfy Cereal’s curiousity about Dade and assures him Dade is a legit hacker/computer dude.

Book naming aside, Joey gets back to his story about some system he accidentally stumbled into and started messing with, eventually realising he'd hacked into a bank. The next day, he read a story about some ATM in a town in Idaho where an ATM spat some cash out into the street, pleased with his accidental accomplishment. Dade, Phreak and Cereal all look stunned, and quickly inform Joey that hacking a bank across state lines is in no uncertain terms, a monumental fuckup lest you be picked up by the FBI. Phreak takes a moment to give Joey a crash course in hacking basics 101 - the most commonly used passwords are apparently "love, secret and sex". Cereal cuts in that you should never forget "god", because apparently male sysadmins love to play up the ‘male ego thing’.

I didn't pick up on this at first, but when they say "password" here, they mean "User ID", and there is no actual password required. If some dickhead sysadmin uses the user ID "God", and you correctly guess that, then apparently you're into the system with unfettered access. Was computer security EVER this poor? Really? Could I have hacked any Unix system in the mid-90s by logging in and claiming to be 'root'? This would be like running America by walking up to the White House and telling the secret service that you’re the president.

Anyway, they move on from Joey's story to rhapsodizing about a really sweet computer system called "a Gibson" (named for, in case it wasn't obvious, Neuromancer writer William Gibson). They briefly chat about ways they would get around the excellent security on such a system. Meanwhile, Cereal has eaten all of Phreak's fries. Mooching and probably being a stoner are now established as some of Cereal's character traits. It’s not relevant to the plot, but it helps flesh out the character.

By the way, this is what the Gibson looks like.

Dade meanwhile has wandered off to watch find Kate playing an arcade game. He watches her play then taunts her for having a "nice score, for a girl". The scoreboard shows all the top scores belong to Kate and she just set a personal best. She invites him to do better, which he proceeds to do. During his play, another guy comes up and leads Kate away - her boyfriend. He has no real personality but that's alright, we won't see him for long. As the only girl in this movie, Kate is clearly going to end up with Dade at some point.

Dade is momentarily distracted from his game but quickly gets back into it. There's some overlays of the game on Dade's focused expression that I guess imply he's really immersed in the game, and we're probably supposed to assume that since Dade is a really good hacker he's also really good at games too - it's all computers, right, what's the difference? Actually, given the way the hacking is generally depicted in this movie, maybe there isn't one.

Eventually Dade’s game ends. Dade watches and is joined by Phreak as his score stomps it's way up the leaderboard, literally smashing each of Kate's scores until it takes her place at the top of the leaderboard. He looks over at Kate who sullenly leaves with her boyfriend.

Outside, Dade spots Kate and her boyfriend making out on his motorcycle. Phreak advises Dade that his name is Curtis and about all he does is "look slick all day". I guess that means that he's not a hacker and therefore not relevant. His total screen time in this movie is now about half done. Kate looks back as they ride away on the motorcycle. I'm not sure if she's supposed to be looking at Dade or just looking generally disinterested in going home with Curtis. Either way, she looks unhappy I guess that's all we need to know for now.

After a brief scene to remind us of the existence of Dade’s mother, Dade is tinkering with his computer and appears to be resetting the time for a fire alarm test. We immediately cut to the next day at school while Dade stands alone in the corridor, looking at his watch. Phreak happens by - apparently these two students alone had nowhere better to be. Dade then deploys an umbrella just as the alarm goes off and the fire sprinklers activate. At the speed everyone busts out of the classrooms I imagine he timed it to coincide with the end of a class bell. Phreak laughs as excited students flood the corridors, frolicking in the downpour of mindless vandalism.

Of course Kate happens to be nearby and stops by Dade as the only dry person in the place to accuse him of the crime. He responds that the pool on the roof must've sprung a leak, which I actually thought was a nice touch. Why not wreck the school and soak everyone to get revenge on one person for a prank? Phreak's enjoying it, anyway.

We cut again to a class presumably later in the day. I could be imagining it but Kate still seems a little bedraggled from the water and is wearing an oversized jersey I assume she borrowed somewhere, so I don't imagine they skipped forward to the next day. Kate is reading a quote she's written on the board which I'll share verbatim since it's self explanatory:

"Dog gave men brains larger than dogs so they wouldn't hump women's legs at cocktail parties" - Ruth Libby.

The teacher of the class (in fact, the only teacher we ever actually see) calls Kate out on this, questioning whether Kate's mother counts as a significant author of the 20th century. Kate responds that her last book sold over twelve million copies... so there, teacher man. There's another quote which Dade identifies as Ginnesberg, drawing Kate's attention to the fact he's present. She protests, as he's not supposed to be here - the teacher laconically states that since Dade is on his list, he must be supposed to be there.

Leaving Kate to fume about this, the teacher then reads another quote written up alongside a grinning Cereal Killer: "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most" which Cereal gleefully identifies as being the words of the great Ozzy Osbourne. The teacher has no idea who Cereal is - we learn Cereal's real name, "Manuel Goldstein", is NOT on the teacher's list and he's chased out ("Whoa, this isn't woodshop class?!").

In another scene presumably that night, Joey is in the midst of another hack which seems to consist of a tank of cloudy water lit up by floating mathematical equations. He's so excited by this, he actually kisses his computer (named Lucy, apparently) and earns a brief electric shock, I assume because of his braces. That was probably supposed to be funny, but I was more amused by the look of concentration on his face immediately afterwards because it kind of looked like he was upset at his computer for betraying him.

A tech geek who as far as I can tell is never named and is wearing shades (possibly to protect him from the glare of the glowing glass columns in this room that are apparently the servers) and has a ponytail, so I'll call him Ponyshades. Actually, I just realised this really familiar looking guy is played by Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller.... Pennyshades? Nah, Ponyshades it is. Ponyshades identifies an intrusion. Someone is logged in as "GOD", but not from inside the building. Intruder alert!

Ponyshades goes ahead and calls his boss, "Mister Belford" who having just been woken up and is mumbling half-asleep from under bedcovers "My name is THE PLAGUE". What.

Ponyshades stammers that there's "something weird happening with the net", and he says "the net", so he could mean either the network or the internet. If he means the internet, that's perfectly understandable - I mean, I've seen 2 girls 1 cup.

We cut back to Joey and his hacking, where has discovered something interesting. He isn't really sure what but he needs proof he was there and begins copying some files to a floppy drive - which takes an incredibly long time.

The Plague turns up in a long coat on a skateboard, so you know he's cool. Actually in a kind of pre-hipster era ironic sort of way this actually works for him. He's clearly older, maybe in his 30s, but he pulls this off so casually that I can believe it. He quickly glances at the monitor while Ponyshades explains why the login looks suspicious and clarifies that indeed "God" wouldn't be up this late. Trace the call!

Back at Joey's place he's enjoying a cigarette while he waits for his file to finish downloading (to a plot convenient floppy disc) when his mother knocks on his door and tries to open it, stopped by a security chain (I can fully appreciate why a teenage boy with a computer and internet access might want one of these on his bedroom door, so no, I never once questioned why the mother doesn't find this suspicious). Joey puts out his cigarette and sprays some air freshener before letting his mother in, she promptly charges in flailing her hands and shooing Joey to bed, switching off the computer.

With foresight unbecoming his character, as soon as his mother leaves Joey pops the disk out, puts it in a box and hides it in a vent above his bed with his other contraband – cigarettes and porn. Meanwhile, Plague and Ponyshades have lost their trace, but to Plague's delight, not before they identified the location of the intruder. Plague then orders someone to get the Secret Service on the line. I'm not sure why he goes straight to the Secret Service with this, maybe that's actually correct procedure. It seemed a little overboard to me.

It just occurred to me as of this writing that mentioning the FBI for “across state lines” matters earlier is actually a very neat little setup for this – obviously it explains why all the events for this cybercrime are local to New York City and not interstate or international. Joey was ‘smart’ enough to not attract the attention of the FBI, so he kept his activity local.

Meanwhile, Phreak, Dade and Cereal have gone to visit another friend. While waiting Dade asks the others about a mysterious hacker named "Acid Burn", but Phreak and Cereal don't seem to know anything.

A mysterious hooded figure known as "Lord Nikon" answers the door. At first he's a reluctant doorman, wanting to know more about Dade - he assumes he's not a real hacker when he has no great hacks to take credit for, but Phreak vouches for him and they go in, Cereal asking to crash at Nikon's place.

The group is watching a new interview of a Secret Service agent called Richard Gill, who is talking about hackers and the threat they pose to society. Cereal considers him hacker public enemy #1, but the subject is soon changed as they flip to another channel showing a test pattern - Nikon, Phreak and Cereal count down and a show abruptly starts. The program is called Hack the Planet, and is hosted by a duo of Asian men calling themselves Razor and Blade.

I'm not sure which is which. Is that racist?

They run through a couple of hacking tips such as recording the tone a phone makes when you drop money into it then playing it into the handset so you can use payphones for free. I'm guessing this is actually a thing you used to be able to do.

The next morning, Joey is singing in the shower when a SWAT team busts in. He's dragged into the living room wearing only a towel, which he promptly loses when he makes a lunge for the guy carrying parts of "Lucy" out of the room. At the same time his screeching mother makes a lunge for him, and we get a closeup of Joey's butt, immediately followed by a closeup of his mother's shocked face. Of everything in the room that could be upsetting her, it seems her son's butt is the most troubling. Ok, I can see that.

We then cut to Richard Gill of the Secret Service being briefed by a younger officer, who tells Gill they got "an uncorrupted hard drive" which is waaay beyond Gill's technical skill. He drops some garbage about protecting the president and all this mumbo jumbo making him feel dumb.

The younger officer clarifies that as they caught Joey by surprise, he wouldn't have had time to erase anything. Now I assumed he was being literal when he said "uncorrupted hard drive", because I guess Joey could have corrupted his hard drive to hide the incriminating evidence. However, Gill's reaction makes me wonder if this was supposed to be some kind of impenetrable technobabble slang, kind of a euphemism like “caught him with his pants down”. Then again, they did that too, I guess.

As exposition goes this was really effective. We now know Gill is absolutely the wrong guy to be hunting hackers and the conversation has brought Gill to a reporter wanting to interview him about Joey's arrest and I'm pretty sure this is the same footage Dade et al were watching earlier. I'm not sure if it is supposed to be the same footage, or if it's just to indicate Gill uses the same canned response every time someone asks him about hackers. We see Joey being hauled down the stairs in the background, something we didn't see on the TV earlier (else I'm pretty sure someone in the room would have mentioned it).

Later on (I assume the same day) Plague is present in a boardroom at Ellingson Mineral - an oil company. A woman enters and comments wryly on his dress sense. Now I don't personally see anything wrong with his clothing, but I'm a twenty-something nerd who was 13 when this movie came out, and not a female executive with a penchant for power suits.

Plague commences to explain that a hacker broke into their systems. The woman interrupts to chastise Plague for allowing this to happen, at which Plague turns on her and very pointedly advises that the hacker got in with a "superuser" account and that people should read his memos about commonly used passwords. He runs through the same list as before: love, secret, sex and - very pointedly right to the woman - "God". And in case we didn't get it, he asks "her holiness" if she'd care to change that.

Once again, apparently in 1995 all you needed was a "password". Throw any old shit at a computer and you're in. I mean if a company has a couple of thousand employees, that's a couple of thousand passwords, right? My cat could walk across my keyboard and break into this kind of system.

Anyway, Plague exposits that the hacker left a virus that caused a remote-controlled oil tanker to flood it's tanks and capsize. He then plays on screen a video of "the Da Vinci Virus", an image of Da Vinci's representation of man actually speaking allowed in a distorted voice that demands five million dollars, or the same thing happens to the whole fleet of oil tankers.

Someone suggests that the tankers be put under manual control. Apparently this is no longer an option, because hey, what not leave tankers at the total automated mercy of computers. They never fail!

Now I know this doesn't really need an explanation, but let's recap:

Useless kid hacker Joey breaks into Ellingson Mineral's system (hereafter referred to as "The Gibson") and steals a random garbage file. The computer security expert claims there was a virus planted and the company's fleet of tankers is basically being held ransom. I think this guy might be a bit suspicious, you guys!

After Plague is done reassuring the suits in the boardroom that everything will be fine because he traced the call and has the hacker is custody, the woman (her name is Margo, by the way) catches up to Plague on the escalators to ask him what the hell that was all about.

We now learn from this exposition-laden conversation that Plague and Margo have a plan to steal money from Ellingson Mineral and they key was the garbage file Joey just happened to steal - Plague created the virus and called in the secret service to seize Joey's computers.

Margo asks Plague if he seriously created a virus that would spill millions of gallons of oil into the sea just to expose some kid hacker, and he gleefully admits that yes, this is the basic idea. Margo is sickened by this, but not at all interested in walking away from the plan to steal 25 million dollars. Hey, you know what, can't blame her there.

Later, Gill is talking to Plague, advising him that they've gone through everything and found no trace of the stolen data. Gill assures Plague that they'll put a tail on Joey to see if he has any accomplices he might have handed the file off to.

Later still, a couple of secret service agents (“Bob” and “Ray”) are sitting outside Joey's place, a little (understandably) cranky about their job doing surveillance on a kid. There's a little banter backwards and forwards about the Hacker's manifesto and free access to information, and apparently wanting this freedom is "commie bullshit". An interesting point - it seems in America you're only allowed to want freedom if you're the underdog. If you're in charge, people requesting freedom makes them communists. I'm sure this was deliberate.

At school, Dade, Phreak and Cereal give us some exposition on Joey's "bust", speculating it might have to do with his bank hack. We don't see any scene which sets this up and I assume it wasn't something that was shot then cut later - they just know. Cereal asks if Joey could hack a Gibson, and I really don't know why he would have brought this up since it's apparent they don't know about the Ellingson Mineral hack yet.

Phreak invites Dade out to a party which Dade is reluctant about until Phreak mentions it's at Kate's place. When Dade hesitates too long, Phreak concludes Dade will be attending, and by extension, has proved that Dade totally wants to hit that.

We now get a brief scene where Gill enters Plague's office and interrupts a thrilling game of whatever the hell Plague was playing in a virtual reality unit to hand over a file, which disgusts Plague and his computerish ways ("ugh... hardcopy"). Gill has discovered Dade might be one of Joey's accomplices. Of course, we know why this is interesting to the Secret Service, though I am a little baffled why Gill is sharing so much information with Plague, because Plague pretty much runs the investigation from here. I assume it's because Gill is three days from retirement and getting too old for this shit, or something.

Dade is returning home, presumably from school when he's accosted by agents Bob and Ray who hustle him through his apartment and into his room where they throw him down on the bed (no, not like that). Plague and Gill are present and Plague mentions a virus that crashed fifteen hundred systems in one day - Dade has a brief flashback to himself as a child in the courtroom, promptly correcting: "fifteen hundred and seven", which causes Bob and Ray in the background to nudge each other and look impressed.

Gill launches into a very official sounding rundown of how they know Dade is friends with Joey, and suspect him for the Da Vinci virus. Plague looks bored and indicates the agents should all leave him alone with Dade, because that completely makes sense. After they leave, Plague gives Dade's balls a verbal tongue bath, complimenting him on his impressive work with his virus and asking for a treaty.

Dade refuses, which prompts Plague to smash some stuff with a bat then leave.

We cut to Dade lying in bed when his door opens and Kate enters. Without a word, she unzips her motorcycle Jacket to give us a brief glimpse of her (itty bitty) breasts, which to my knowledge is the first time we see Jolie topless. I'm assuming she got a boob job after this, because these things are beestings compared to what she's packing these days. She leaps on Dade and starts making out with him, only to have secret service agents bust in and drag her away - Dade wakes up in a cold sweat.

Psyche! Not the worst dream you could have about Angelina Jolie I guess, but not great either. Dade has a lot on his mind, clearly.

At the party (presumably later that night) Phreak is explaining to Dade how Kate's mother makes a living on self help books with titles like "Women who love men who are emotional amoeba" (that was a Jerry Springer episode, wasn't it?). Dade seems to think this explains a lot about Kate, though in all honesty, how well does he really know her? At this point in the movie they've accumulated about two minutes of screen time together, including the part that was just a dream. Then again, you could take this line as Dade just going along with whatever Phreak says about Kate to downplay the massive crush he has on her.

This party is packed and it's one of those parties teenagers only seem to have in movies - a hundred people all dancing and having a great time, etc. I was never invited to a lot of parties in high school but I'm pretty sure no one at my school was having parties anything like this. Maybe we all gave up after teenage comedies of the 90s set our expectations too high.

Nearby, Nikon and Cereal are checking out a girl while Nikon recites a bunch of her personal information. Dade cuts in to ask how he knew that - Nikon brags about his photographic memory. Get it? Nikon? Photograph? I wonder if he would have been called Lord Canon or Kodak if they'd cut a larger cheque. He calls out the girl's name which elicits a background "hey, how'd he know my name?" which I have to admit is a good point. Even if Nikon didn't have a photographic memory, where DID he get the personal information for a girl who's never met him? Nikon, you sly dog.

Instead of being at the party, Joey is at an anti-addiction meeting as part of a plea bargain: no time served if he admits he needs help for his computer addiction. He's puffing on a cigarette in each hand and is constantly sipping from a cup of coffee, while protesting he isn't REALLY an addict. He drains his coffee then hastily departs to go get another cup. Honestly, this is one of my favourite scenes even though it's not really related to anything. I'm glad they didn't have to cut it for time or anything.

Back at the party, our hacker gang have made their way into Kate's bedroom and started messing around with her laptop, even switching off the lights to admire the display capabilities. Almost immediately, Kate enters with Curtis and fall onto her bed, failing to notice the four guys standing nearby. As Curtis starts undressing Kate, the guys quietly perv from the corner until Nikon inadvertently mutters a compliment about "Burn", which prompts a startled response from Dade and blows their cover.

The lights come up while Kate demands to know why they're there, which is reasonable seeing as how they're hanging out in her room and just saw her half naked. Somehow the Kate-bomb is immediately defused when Nikon compliments her computer - Curtis departs when he realises Kate is going to choose her computer over him, never to be seen again. We completely fail to care since Curtis had no personality whatsoever. Dade and Cereal mock his departure and Kate just now notices Dade is in the room, immediately going back into rage mode.

Phreak tries to calm her down by informing her Dade is there as his guest, which doesn't help in the slightest. Dade confronts her about being Acid Burn and introduces himself as Crash Override. She mocks him for invading "her turf", i.e.: the TV station. Cereal points out that if you pair their names together, you get "Crash and Burn", which I admit is way cooler sounding than "Brangelina" or "Bennifer".

At Plague's loft, he's busy tapping away at his computer while Margo is in the middle of getting dressed - if it wasn't apparent already, their relationship is more than professional or criminal. Plague explains that he's now hacked the FBI database, and plans to use Dade's mother to get control of Dade.

Back to the party, Dade is taking advantage of Kate's absence to mess around with her computer, which at least looks like a real computer and not the weird electronic hulk Dade's been working with so far. She enters the room and they engage in some playful innuendo-laden computer banter ehich turns into a veiled debate about who's the better hacker.

Eventually they settle on a hacking duel - if Kate wins, Dade becomes her slave (the boring kind). If Dade wins, Kate has to go out on a date with Dade. They shake on it and we cut to a brief montage of Dade and Kate preparing themselves for the contest, with Kate medicating and flipping through a notebook and Dade playing quick-draw and doing a Taxi Driver impersonation with some diskettes in the mirror. I have a feeling if some kid watched this movie 15 years from now, not knowing what diskettes are, they'd going to assume that they're some kind of really advanced technology, far surpassing the DVD or Blu-Ray.

Over the montage, Phreak explains that the contest will be to see who can cause the most trouble for Richard Gill as revenge for arresting Joey. After a brief pause, we then cut to another montage of Dade and Kate alternating hacks from a laptop in a variety of public locations.

From a payphone, Kate hacks into a bank and tampers with Gill's account info: Richard is at lunch at a fancy restaurant and the waiter cuts up his credit card.

Dade hacks into an online personals column and edits an advertisement with Gill's number, implying Gill is into a bunch of kinky sex: we see Gill struggling to cope with a huge volume of phone calls from local perverts. Far be it from me to critique Dade's hacking techniques, but wouldn't the same thing be accomplished by just placing the ad directly rather than hacking into and editing someone else's? Or maybe Gill really did have a personal ad and they just changed it. It's not really explained.

- From the observation deck of the Empire State building, Kate hacks the DMV and puts a DUI and a bunch of parking tickets/traffic violations on Gill's record: Gill is pulled over and forcefully arrested.

- From another payphone, Dade hacks into the secret service personnel records and changes Gill's status to deceased: Gill calls the accounts department and is a little bit shocked to find out his status.

At Cyberdelia (the cool hacker hangout of the future!) the gang is standing around waiting for judgement on Dade's hack. They're all very impressed by Gill's untimely demise, but apparently this only brings Dade even with Kate. Phreak suggests they improvise the next round, and for some reason Dade takes this as a cue to up the stakes: Dade challenges Kate to wear a dress on their date - Kate challenges Dade to the same. After a second or two to consider it, Dade agrees.

In a dark room we see hands caressing a lithe figure in a red bustier, with a slow soundtrack and soft moans blending with the porno soundtrack - then the camera pans up to show Dade's face as belonging to the body in the outfit. As a tribute to Dade's earlier dream sequence, Kate sits up in bed, gasping for breath... then smiles, lets out a soft moan and flops back down to go back to sleep.

Next day at school Dade is walking down the hall when Kate calls out to get his attention - she flips open her locker to reveal the red bustier outfit she dreamed about the night before. She makes it clear she has no intention of being the one wearing it by stating she had to guess his size.

This brief aside over with, we see Dade at home receiving a package - a brand new laptop. Now I guess it's supposed to be some top-end shit but what really strikes me is the clear plastic shell. Remember that, you guys? When we started making our electronics casings clear so we could see all the wires and circuits and whatnot? We had clear plastic Gameboys, clear plastic XBoxes and apparently, clear plastic computers. I wish I was clear plastic.

He flips it open and it immediately starts playing a video of the Plague, who seems to have realised threatening Dade isn't getting him anywhere so why not a bribe? Free computer! Please be my friend and don't use this computer to hack me or anything.

Plague raves about them (him and Dade) being "the keyboard cowboys" and all the other people (I guess, non-hackers?) as "the cattle" which I guess sounds cool and all and I see the point he's trying to make, but it still comes across as entirely delusional. Maybe it was supposed to? Am I being too forgiving? Yes, probably.

Plague asks Dade for the disk and at this point it's a pretty big request because Plague doesn't really know about a "disk". For all he knows, Joey didn't copy the garbage file at all! I understand his need to take precautions but he's being pretty specific for a guy who's really only guessing.

At Joey's place, his mother takes pity on him and decides to un-ground him, deciding he's suffered enough for being arrested by the secret service. As soon as she leaves the room he scrambles for his air vent and retrieves the diskette with the garbage file on it.

If I could make one recommendation to Joey right now, it would be to take the file he was arrested for hacking on a disk to a public place and meet with one of your known accomplices. Oh man, he’s actually doing it! Dude, I was kidding!

Joey meets Phreak in the park and they discuss the file. Joey has trouble convincing Phreak this file is what he was busted for, but I guess Phreak realises Joey's legit when he notices a agent Bob agent taking photos of them by sitting in plain view and resting a telescopic lens backwards over his shoulder and snapping randomly. You know what would be less conspicuous? Just about anything, I think.

Joey and Phreak run in separate directions, pursued by an agent each. Phreak obviously makes it away from his pursuer because he's in a bathroom at the school sticking the diskette to the back of a condom dispenser with some gum.

He then proceeds home and apparently destroys all his hacking-related notes in anticipation of a bust. Frankly I don't know if he actually did any of this or not because it kind of bleeds into a dream sequence where secret service agents bust in and arrest him.

When he is woken by his mother the next morning though, she opens the blind and a secret service agent with an assault rifle hops in through the window, like he'd been perched there for hours just waiting for the opportunity. Good going Phreak's mom, everything would've been fine if you kept that shade down!

Agents quickly fill the room and Gill places Phreak under arrest for computer fraud. Phreak's mother glares at her son and starts slapping him in the head while yelling at him in Spanish which 'comically' results in Phreak urging the secret service to hurry up and arrest him.

They take Phreak to the police lockup downtown (I guess) where he's led past some cells of hooting prisoners to a phone. The phone has a locking plate over the keypad to prevent him trying to dial anything other than the number that the guard enters for him. Now it seems to me Joey could use that call to dial anyone he designated, not just... whoever the hell is dialled for him (his mother, who already knows he's been arrested? A public defender? We never find out.)

Phreak starts hammering on the exposed hang-up hooks until the phone diverts him to an operator. He pleads that he's having trouble dialling a number and gives the operator a new number to dial, which is Kate. I can appreciate why Phreak wouldn't want to implicate Kate in all of this so I can understand why he didn't just tell them to call her or another of his hacking friends in the first place, but it always struck me as a bit odd regardless. Maybe I should try getting arrested sometime.

Once Kate answers, Phreak quickly explains that Joey's bust was legit and that they're now trying to implicate Phreak in the Da Vinci virus. They have to work fast to find out what's on the disc before they're all busted. As the cop returns to finish up Phreak's phone call, he quickly babbles that "it's in that place I put that thing that time", which is such a fantastic line that I have spent the last ten years just waiting for an opportunity to use it. No such opportunity has arisen.

Kate goes into the boy’s bathroom and approaches the condom dispenser. She quickly retrieves the disk but notices a lot of guys watching her, so she covers this by buying a condom and swaying on out of there like it's no big thing.

Immediately (and possibly aptly) we have a cut and Dade's mother opens her door to see Kate standing there. Kate gives her a slow up-and-down glance which actually comes across as really insulting. Dade's mother shrugs this off and seems to think this girl explains all of Dade's odd behaviour recently. Well, ok, she might have a point. She invites Kate in and she's followed by Cereal - they proceed to Dade's room.

Kate bluntly says she needs Dade's help, which Dade starts to mock her for, since technically they're still duelling. Cereal interjects to insist that Dade and Kate put aside their differences for the greater good. It's actually not a bad little speech so I'll copy it here verbatim:

“Truce, you guys. Listen, we got a higher purpose here, alright? A wake up call for the Nintendo Generation. We demand free access to data, well, it comes with some responsibility. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things.”

(pause)

“What? It's Corinthians I, Chapter 13, verse 11, no duh. Come on.”

Kate informs Dade that whatever is on the disc has resulted in Joey and Phreak being busted. Dade quickly states that he can't touch the disc since everyone who does gets busted - now technically he only JUST found that out, so it seems like his judgement is a little snappy here, but I can't technically fault him for it.

Cereal leaves the room is disgust, which I can't technically fault him for either. Kate appeals to Dade, really putting her honour as a hacker on the line by practically begging Dade for help - and the asshole still shoots her down. I know it's part of the traditional "Hero's Journey" to refuse the call, but we're like two-thirds of the way through the movie at this point.

Eventually she convinces him to at least keep a copy of the disk so when everyone else gets busted they have some uncorrupted evidence (half a garbage file... yeah, that'll help).

Dade's mother pops her head in to offer Kate and Dade free access to the refrigerator, adding that Cereal has already extended himself this liberty. This is the last we see of the "Cereal is a freeloader" running gag so I assume it’s also the punchline. Was it worth it?

Later on, Kate and Cereal gone, Plague phones Dade and tells him the girl has the disk - how he knows this is not explored or explained. Dade again refuses to help until Plague sends his laptop a file - a doctored FBI record with a bunch of drug and fraud violations (we also finally learn Dade's mother is called Lauren).

Plague tells Dade if he won't co-operate, he'll upload the fake record, have Dade's mother arrested, and then replace the original so that she simply disappears into the system.

Dade still isn't buying it but isn't taking any chances either. There's a rather sweet scene where Dade pulls a blanket up over his sleeping mother where she's crashed out on the couch, then goes outside to call Plague from a payphone and agree to give him the disk while at the same time trying to get Plague to understand Kate isn't involve. Plague ignores this and just assures Dade that his mother is safe now.

On reflection, I actually think it's really well done how this contrasts with your typical ransom scenario. Dade can physically see and touch his mother, she's safe and sound upstairs in their apartment - but he still can't protect her.

There are a few cuts here to indicate time passing, then a limo approaches with Plague slipstreaming on his skateboard. Dade holds out the disc which Plague snatches from him as the limo passes.

The limo stops a little further up the road so Plague can hop back in (why did he even pull the skateboard stunt in the first place?) and while it's stopped, Dade starts to run after it until it's departure is conveniently obscured by a rush of steam escaping from a grate in the sidewalk and the limo pulls away around the next corner. Why? Did Dade suddenly change his mind? Maybe he does instantly regret his decision which would explain what happens next.

Dade goes to Kate's place where Nikon and Cereal are also hanging out, examining the code on the disk - well, really admiring it. Cereal concludes because it's so neat and tidy that a hacker must've written it... which is an interesting leap of logic, but let's move on.

Dade is desperately trying to confess what he's done to Kate but she's too wrapped up in unravelling the garbage file code, which gets Dade's attention too. Acting practically on autopilot, he takes a seat in front of the computer as Nikon literally *points* to the part of the code that is missing/corrupted.

Dade takes over and we get a super-speed montage of Dade working tirelessly at the computer while the others buzz around. Pizza boxes appear and the pizza within disappears. Huge sheafs of paper are laid out around the room, because I guess printing it all out makes sense for some reason?

Eventually we return to normal speed and Dade announces the Garbage file isn't really a virus - it's a worm. The worm "nibbles" a few cents off each transaction the company makes, gradually nibbling more and more. It's currently taken $21.8 million and when it ends it's run in three days, it'll have accumulated $25 million. Guess who has plans for all that money?

As the crew pace around trying to figure out who wrote it, Dade blurts that he knows the guy - the security guy from Ellingson. he also admits he handed him a copy of the disk before he knew what was on it, which causes some serious aggravation. Kate is the first to cool off, wanting to know why Dade was tagged and this is where he confesses he's really "Zerocool".

Nikon of course with his photographic memory recites the details of the case and gushes over the big "fifteen hundred and seven" systems going down to Dade's virus - but Kate then cuts off the praise party with "there goes MIT". I... I don't know what she's saying here. The only MIT I'm aware of is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Is Kate saying that because of all this she won't go to her preferred college? That's her primary concern? Come to think of it that was Dade's mom's main concern about Dade's future too. Does that count as a recurring theme? They were really playing on the socially constructed fears of teenagers here, weren't they?

Dade stands up and pledges to hack the Gibson himself to get the real file and clear all their names, and his academic future be damned! Nikon calculates that the cops will be onto him in five minutes, which I assumed was just his way of expressing "quickly", but apparently he means this literally.

Kate says if she helps they can do the hack in seven minutes, which is absolutely the most useless statement she can make. Cereal chips in offering to help because that gets them down to six minutes. Oh, I see where you're going with this, Hackers. Nikon then pseudo-reluctantly says he'll save all of them by adding his help, since his talents will bring it down to 5 minutes. Well ok then. As Dade says, "let's go shopping!"

Dade and Kate hop a fence at night to go dumpster diving for passwords (or something) at Ellingson. Kate falls on top of Dade in the dumpster which he remarks on, but it's not particularly clever and is a lame setup for Kate reaching down between them to get her flashlight. Not Dade's penis. Damn!

As they leave, a security guard notices them and calls out. Kate responds by firing a flare gun at the guard to scare him off, which is actually kind of cool. Of course it goes way off course and no one gets hurt, but if someone shot an incandescent ball of fire at me, I'd run like hell too.

It's daylight again so I guess it's the next day. Cereal steals a bunch of tools and a manual from the back of a phone company truck. We cut to a woman seated at a desk while Gill walks past so I guess this is the secret service building... Cereal then crawls out of under the woman's desk advising he couldn't locate the problem - what amuses me most here is the woman's reaction. She kind of jumps startled as if she didn't know Cereal was under the desk which made me assume he's snuck under there or climbed out of a manhole or something. Honestly, I don't know what to make of it. Cereal then strolls away after lewdly waggling his toolbelt in the woman's face. As she regains her composure, we cut to under the desk where Cereal has placed a small white box with a blinking red LED, presumably a phone tap.

Meanwhile, Nikon is walking around Ellingson mineral pretending to deliver flowers, watching people type in their passwords so he can memorise them. at one point Plague walks past him and regards him with confusion or suspicion but I think they only put Plague in there so we'd know Nikon was at Ellingson, because nothing is ever made of it.

Now we're at Plague's loft apartment and he's dicking around with the Launch/Cancel prompt screen for his Da Vinci virus. There's some exposition between him and Margo about the garbage file he got from Dade, and Plague is worried the hackers can now implicate him and Margo - so he launches the virus to give him an excuse to get the secret Service to arrest Dade and the others before they can bust him. Margo is naturally horrified again at Plague's willingness to cause massive oil spills, and is actually more concerned about the oil spill itself than being caught. Plague tells her there is no right and wrong, only "fun and boring". So... I guess since prison is dull and being rich is awesome, who cares about killing a bunch of whales and seals and shit?

Plague launches the virus then calls Gill, demanding he arrest the hackers so Plague can stop their virus in time. Gill submits arrest warrants for each of the hackers and I think this scene is where we actually learn Nikon's real name: Paul Cook.

Once he's done with that we cut to the phone tap under the desk and this bit throws me because as far as we know, Cereal only tapped the random woman's desk. Even if we assume she's his secretary, does Gill's phone line go through his secretary's phone? Was he telling his secretary to issue the warrants? Is his phone tapped directly? Who knows? It doesn't matter. Point is, Nikon and Cereal are listening in on a recording of Gill's line (there's old school tape spools behind them, so I assume it was a recording and not live - or maybe it was live and they were recording it too... again, it doesn't matter). Nikon calls Kate to report their impending arrests.

In a scene that I think is really well done (apart from some really, really stilted dialogue) the hackers meet up on a random train (I guess this symbolises movement, the events picking up speed?) to discuss their strategy - i.e.: how many passwords they stole. Nikon remarks he doesn't know how many he's memorised, but he's got a headache, so we can assume it's a shitload. Meanwhile, Cereal starts blathering on about how Ellingson handled (past tense) those oil spills on the fourteenth - Nikon reminds him that it's currently the thirteenth, so he's talking about the future.

Suddenly Kate realises that the oil spill is a cover for Plague's virus and that Plague is setting them up big time. She drags Dade off the train at the next stop, telling Cereal and Nikon to lay low while they sort something out.

Kate takes Dade to some kind of rap/hip hop concert where Razor and Blade are inexplicably dancing on stage. Dade ridicules Kate's "big plan" because Razor & Blade are a couple of "flakes", but Kate assures him they're "elite" and seriously, that's the entire dialogue. I was trying to streamline it for recap purposes, but it's not possible. Let's go through this again:

Dade: "Razor and Blade? They're flakes!"

Kate: "They're elite! Let's get 'em!"

Jesus, there are some places where the script is so lean that recapping feels redundant, but I've come this far, so let's forge on! We're almost on the final straight!

Kate and Dade make it backstage somewhere, and wander around aimlessly until a gun on a robot arm jabs Dade in the back, causing him to yell out. Razor and Blade appear on a monitor and demand to know what they wanted. Kate smack talks them a little bit, while Dade looks on nervously - after all, he's the one with the gun pointed at him. Razor and Blade decide they like Kate's balls but they can waste Dade - the gun fires. Literally, because it's just a cigarette lighter. My sides, they ache.

Kate and Dade meet face to face with Razor and Blade, and briefly explain the situation. Razor and Blade decide that they need more than just themselves, and propose that they send out a major distress call so all hackers worldwide can unite in this cause.

Now we can go on and on about technical inaccuracies, but this right here is the most unrealistic part of the movie. Yeah, let's send out the word so hackers can help a couple of kids in New York! Sure, it's for a good cause, but there is so much bullshit on the internet, even in 1995, I find it really hard to believe that this kind of thing would fail to get lost in the general noise. But ok, Razor and blade have some kind of hacker mailing list and figure that everyone can crack the Gibson all at once. Sorted!

We cut briefly to Dade hacking something that looks like a grid with traffic light icons. hmm, I wonder...

Now we're at central park and Nikon is playing chess against some orthodox looking Jew dudes. I guess this is supposed to be interesting because old Jewish guys are awesome at chess or something? Cereal gets a page (seriously! A page! ) which signals him it's time to start. Nikon moves a piece then smiles before leaving. the two Jewish dudes look befuddled like “whoa, that kid just owned us at chess. What the hell?”

Pretty sure this is still the most reliable form of transportation in New York City.

The hackers are rollerblading down the street and there's some secret service vehicles moving to pursue them. Suddenly, all the traffic lights ahead flick over to green - a long clear path as far as they can see. As they pass through each intersection the lights on the intersecting streets turn green too, causing massive pile ups in their wake and creating a gridlock that the less mobile secret service agents are stuck in. Gill slaps a car in frustration, setting off a car alarm. Man, he just can't get a break.

At Grand Central station, the hackers are getting set up, hooking their laptops to a bunch of payphone booths, Dade telling everyone to use their best viruses. As opposed to what, Dade? Their shitty viruses? Outlook express? Dade is wearing a purple eyepiece here, and I guess if this were a hacking RPG it would give +1 to hacking or something. As it stands, it's purpose is never explained or commented on in any way. It's just there to look flashy and cool, so we know this is serious business.

For some reason Cereal chooses this moment to hoot like a malfunctioning robot gibbon, sheepishly announcing that he was just breaking the tension. Kate tells him to go something else and slots Joey into Cereal's place. Uh oh, lil' Joey is in the big leagues now! I’ll call this moment Chekov’s pistol, because it’s like Chekov’s gun, but shorter. I guess Joey's using Cereal's laptop, which he would be totally unfamiliar with. This is never remarked on, and never becomes important.

The hackers boot up their machines, various flashy personalised graphics appearing on the screen. We briefly see the Ellingson offices where phones are ringing and someone put dirty messages on their screen savers, before cutting to the computer room where Plague works. Margo acts clueless while Plague combats the viruses.

This is what hacking looks like.

A cookie monster virus appears and demands a cookie. Apparently the cure is to type 'cookie'. Holy shit, I'm learning so much.

A zero bug is attacking login files. The cure is to run an anti-virus. Shouldn't there already be an anti-virus running passively? Or is this a special anti-virus that only works in short bursts?

There's a rabbit in the administration system. The cure is a "flu shot". What is this I don't even. Margo is equally as confused and asks what's going on. Ponyshades (hey Ponyshades, haven't seen you for awhile!) explains a rabbit replicates 'like cancer'.

The Da Vinci virus graphic starts singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" and we get a graphic that indicates the tankers are filling their ballast tanks and are starting to capsize.

Cut to Dade - he needs more time.

Cut to Plague - he has located the hackers and tells Gill.

Back to Dade - the phone near him is ringing. He takes time out of precious hacking schedule to answer it and be taunted by Plague.

Thank you for calling!

Kate's phone rings, Razor and Blade are announcing their presence. We now get a montage of hackers all over the world joining in, and we know it's all over the world, because we see typical landmarks from England (Big Ben), Italy (Leaning Tower of Pisa), etc. The Japanese hacker has fans on the wall, kabuki face paint and is wearing a kimono. Holy shit what the fuck. I’m Australian so I guess when I’m hacking I have zinc on my nose, one of those floppy hats with corks dangling from the brim, and a picture of the Sydney Opera House on my wall.

Ponyshades announces the hackers are going after the kernel, which Margo hears as "Colonel". Ponyshades explains that the kernel is like the computer's "brain", so Margo (who has a technical mental cache of about three items) connects this with the "cancer" from before and concludes that the Gibson now has "brain cancer". This is actually pretty funny, trust me.

At the station, secret service/SWAT team agents are storming in.

Quick cut to Dade: he's found the right garbage file.

Quick cut to Plague: he disconnects Dade.

Back to Dade: he reports that he's been cut off, Nikon responds by yelling that Joey is "stupid busy". Is that good or bad? I don't know.

Quick cut reminds us the secret service is still closing in, because it's been fifteen whole seconds since we last saw them. This is as close as this movie gets to having a chase scene.

Cut back to Dade, who is backseat coaching Joey on how to find the garbage file.

Cut to the secret service who have just ordered an empty bank of payphones to freeze - the handsets are all taped together or something, for some reason. I guess it was to mislead the secret service. I have no idea how this would actually work, but I'm not an awesome hacker. They continue running.

Back to Joey and Dade: the file is downloaded. Kate instructs Razor and Blade to 'kill the Gibson'.

Cut to Plague: the Da Vinci virus dies and the tanks stop capsizing.

Message on Plague's "systems display":

MESS WITH THE BEST

DIE LIKE THE REST

Because that's Dade's signature taunt which we saw one other time in this whole movie, get it? Even though technically it wasn't Dade who beat Plague at all. Whatever, let's move on. The Gibson dies. The hackers celebrate, the secret service arrive and arrest them.

As he's being led away, Dade (with his hands cuffed behind he back) reveals he has palmed the disc with the garbage file and perfectly blind-frisbees the disc into a nearby trash can without anyone noticing, despite being surrounded by secret service/SWAT.

Outside as Dade is pushed into a car, he notices Cereal in the crowd and starts yelling that "They're trashing our rights", and keeps repeating the word "trashing" until Cereal realises the significance. Cereal runs inside and finds the right bin, fishing out the disc.

Gill calls Plague to report the hackers were caught red handed. I guess this is some time later because the call reached Plague at his loft, and he and Margo celebrate by clinking champagne glasses and giggling before scurrying off to bed. I guess Margo is ok with being a criminal now that the tankers didn't capsize after all.

In Plague's office, Dade tries to take the full blame for the hacking, suggesting Kate was just some girl who doesn't really know anything about computers. Even though he's doing something noble, Kate looks pretty offended by this. Gill doesn't buy it anyway, and receives an intercom notification that Dade's mother has arrived so he leaves.

Dade and Kate have a moment where Dade explains to Kate he is only trying to protect her, because I guess she couldn't figure that out herself. Dade then activates the intercom and can hear Gill arguing with Dade's mom - she's steadfastly denying that Dade would do anything wrong which is pretty cool on her part, considering she doesn't actually know anything that happened and Dade only JUST got of probation for wrecking the stock market. She has no reason whatsoever to stuck up for him, but she does, even threatening to talk to the press. Gill tries to scare her by saying she can't talk to the press (although I guess it's ok for him to talk to them - hypocrite).

In Gill's office, Kate admits Mrs. Murphy's nerve. Dade seems to really appreciate her for the first time.

Outside again, Gill is in the middle of his big "hackers are evil" spiel while Joey and Nikon are led in, then suddenly Gill's broadcast is cut off and he's replaced by Cereal, broadcasting from an unknown location with the help of Razor and Blade.

Cereal reveals to everyone what the real plot was, that Margo is one of the account holders... for the worm that just stole $25 million from Ellingson. In Plague's loft, Margo sits bolt upright in bed, Plague next to her. We have a brief cut to back to Cereal on TV as he announces Plague is the other account holder. Back in Plague's loft, Margo turns to him... but he's vanished. She pats the covers in disbelief.

We cut to Gill who is understandably a bit miffed by the deception, though considering he believes Cereal’s explanation immediately it seems like being conned is part of Gill's daily routine. He'll believe ANYTHING, apparently.

The hackers are released and celebrate. Dade and his mom hug.

Later, Margo is being led past some police lockup cells, in juxtaposition to Phreak's arrest earlier. She offers to turn Plague over to them as the REAL culprit, though this isn't getting her anywhere, I guess since she has no idea where he actually is.

We cut to a plane, where "Mr. Babbage" (Plague in disguise) is sitting in business class working on a laptop. Later, this reference would be lifted in Bastard Operator from Hell, as the alias of the Bastard - I believe his associate the PFY goes by the name Mr. Pascal. Or maybe it's coincidence. Anyway, Gill has tracked Plague and arrests him. He then yells his innocence and calls for assistance. we get footage of the plane taking off, and frankly I can't figure out why. wouldn't they have kept the plane on the ground for the arrest? I don't get it.

We cut to New York where Dade and Kate are strolling along. Kate is wearing a dress and frankly, it's so ambiguously shot and poorly lit that I could swear Dade is as well - except the next lines of dialogue are Dade complimenting Kate in her dress, and Kate insisting that Dade "would have" looked better. So I guess he isn't?

Dade then suggests they go for a swim, and suddenly they're swimming fully clothed in a rooftop swimming pool somewhere. Dade admits Kate is elite. Kate mockingly informs him that if he’d admitted that earlier they could have saved themselves a lot of time. Dade then draws Kate's attention to some nearby office buildings, where the lights are flashing on and off in specific windows to spell out "Crash and Burn". Kate laughs.

Crash and what? CRASH AND WHAT? GOD DAMN IT.

Dade now starts to confess that he's been having weird dreams. Kate finishes his sentence, so she's admitting it too. They kiss. Credits roll over semi-artistic imagery of them swimming and undressing (though we never see any actual nudity).

THE END.

For the record, none of the images are mine. I shamelessly stole them off google.