Takedown (2004)

One of the best films i have seen

A Masterpiece!

A Disappointing Continuation

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

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

The technologies used and shown in the movie are accurate. This movie is much better then Hackers where ridiculous 3D and CGI are passed off as hacking. As a fellow geek I enjoyed watching this. We all know that Kevin is innocent, so basing your viewing experience on the fact that your watching something based on a true story is absurd. I found myself relating on many levels with Skeet's character, Kevin. The idea's and philosophies correctly portray the ideals of many hackers, even today. Information does belong to the world. This movie gets it right in the sense that it shows the perspectives that most hackers share. This movie is worth owning and is a must have for any geek or information security professional.

From everything that I heard about the original script (which was "obtained" under mysterious circumstances and leaked to the world before shooting started), I was expecting this movie to be really, really awful. I was pleasantly surprised to see that either Miramax, the writers, and/or the producers took some of the hacker community's complaints seriously, and adjusted the script accordingly. The final script that was filmed is certainly more even-handed and fair to Kevin Mitnick than Shimomura and Markoff's horrible book "Takedown" was (for a much better treatment of the Kevin Mitnick story, read Jonathan Littman's 1996 book "The Fugitive Game"), and we should be grateful that this film didn't end up being the hatchet-job on Kevin that we all thought it was going to be.I was glad to see that the "trashcan cover scene", for example, didn't make the final cut, but a little disappointed that we weren't shown how large of a role that John Markoff played during Shimo's "manhunt" for Kevin, and then afterward; according to their own book, Markoff was present for many of the events that took place in North Carolina, and should have at least been shown in the scenes at the cell site alongside Shimo, Julia and the FBI agents.They also could have done more with the "Lance" character, who represented a real hacker calling himself "Agent Steal" that was working for the FBI, and who figured prominently in the arrest and conviction of another hacker named Kevin Poulsen. (Poulsen's story, done properly, would make for a great movie too, but I digress..) Another no-brainer, slam-dunk scene that should have been in the movie, but wasn't for some reason, was Kevin and Shimo's one and only face to face meeting, in a North Carolina courtroom shortly after his arrest, where Kevin uttered his now famous line "I respect your skills" to Shimo.I mean, it's no "Saving Private Ryan" or "Godfather Part II", but it isn't bad, either; in fact, it is a much more realistic and enjoyable movie than "Hackers" or "Sneakers" (to its credit, "Hackers" did have the lovely Angelina Jolie going for it), though not as much fun as "War Games", which is truly the "Citizen Kane" of hacker movies, or "Pump Up The Volume", which was more of a hacker movie than people realize, even though the "hacking" is done with a pirate radio station instead of a computer.As others have already recommended here, go find a copy of "Freedom Downtime", the excellent documentary about Kevin that was produced by Emmanuel Goldstein and the staff of 2600 Magazine, you won't be disappointed.

I was for some time in this business, so know how goofy some of the science is. And the acting is on the cheesy side as you would expect. And I understand that the many elements of the truth have been stretched quite a bit, both by the original participants and the filmmakers.But there are some things about this are very appealing. For one thing, there isn't the ordinary fantasy of cool computer graphics that movies like to pawn off on the unwitting; its pretty much scrolling text, as it is in the real world.What's really missing is the sense of community that all the gangs in this drama have in real life. Moving ahead for all the gangs is a game that encompasses life, something that is played down here as the mano a mano angle is enhanced.I did like a couple things: Amanda Peet has a non-formulaic role and does well with it. Some of the tensionbuilding devices were effective: the gloom, the dutching, the thunder. And it was good that to some extent they showed the real cracker game: it is not so much a game of genius or ingenuity, but of the con.Someday, someone will make a movie that really does exploit the mathematics of elite computer types. These guys tend not to be hackers: programmers are the secretaries of the trade. I'm talking about the few score artists who exist, mostly in obscure corners.Ted's Evaluation: 2 of 3 -- Has some interesting elements.