Hacker Cinema
Swordfish
2001 · Film · 99 min
Directed by Dominic Sena
Rogue agent Gabriel Shear is determined to get his mitts on $9 billion stashed in a secret Drug Enforcement Administration account. He wants the cash to fight terrorism, but lacks the computer skills necessary to hack into the government mainframe. Enter Stanley Jobson, a n'er-do-well encryption expert who can log into anything.
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73 comments on Hacker News
Just like watching the movie Hackers and hearing how he hacked the gibson or the 7 screens setup in swordfish : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Ds9CeG-VY
Mr Beast isn’t the internet. He’s a TV show host. And there’s been exploitative TV shows for decades. This isn’t a format Mr Beast invented.
As for security, that was always an issue. Malware, denial of services attacks, etc aren’t a recent phenomena. And hacking was so prevalent that even Hollywood caught wind, hence the slew of hacker movies in the 80s and 90s (Wargames, TRON, Hackers, Anti Trust, Swordfish, Lawnmower Man, and so on and so forth).
The problem isn’t that internet etiquette has gotten worse. The problem is that there is so much more online these days that the attack surface has grown by several orders magnitude. Like how there’s more road accidents now than there was in the 70s despite driving tests progressively getting tougher (in most countries). People aren’t worse drivers, there’s just more roads and busier with more vehicles.
This is so nostalgic for me. In 1999, I watched a couple of movies, and I decided I wanted to be a hacker. I watched the movie Hackers, Swordfish and let's not forget The Matrix. These were all influntial to me, I went down a rabbit hole and found the Hacker Manifesto, which I resonated with. I slurped up all the information I could find (There wasn't much), and then came a realization that changed everything for me. Hacking was as hard as writing software to me, one was creating and inventing things and the other was tearing down what others had made...not to mention it was also illegal (White hat was not really big at the time). I was like, if I was gonna do one, I'd rather develop software and make things that made people's day and got praised for than ruin people's day and possibly go to jail. Hence my origin story as a software developer :)
Straight out of the 2001 film Swordfish
In the 2001 film "Swordfish", there was always a piece of dialogue that stood out to me where Hugh Jackman describes code for a computer worm he wrote in college as being hidden on a PDP-10 I.T.S. machine kept online for history's sake. It's shown and noted that his character went to Caltech.
It is saying something that this might be the most plausible part of the film.
sounds like the movie Swordfish
Trivia: The title of the movie “Swordfish” is named after an old Marx Brothers routine from the movie “Horse Feathers, “ which revolves around an illegal speakeasy’s password to get in.
Which is, of course, “swordfish.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySqec8WrEQQ
I always assume that a movie like Pushing Tin is about as accurate of a portrayal of the job of ATC as Swordfish or Antitrust is for software development.
Haven't you watched Swordfish? https://hardforum.com/threads/thoughts-about-the-multi-display-set-from-the-movie-swordfish.1107929/
It breaks my heart to see these stories.
When I first started studying censorship circumvention, it was often Indian hackers who wanted to practice their English who would learn about VPNs and things to try to pirate movies (alongside closed caption srt files) to improve their English.
Before I drop an emo wall of text, here's the meat:
One hack you can do is get a magnet link[0] and/or SRT file via the VPN or Tor. Then, you go somewhere you know has fast wifi, pay for a drink it makes sense to drink slowly-ish (15--50 minutes), and download your files in the clear to a machine not logged into any social media then immediately get on a bus or tuk tuk, pretend you're getting a water or something, then get back on something in the opposite direction to ditch any lazy tails.
To clear: this works once or twice, eventually they may come drag you out of the café you're shitposting from - it has happened to me and it might happen to you.
I was lucky to live in a republic, so aside from wound to my pride and my body, I'm still alive and posting.
(I'm actually at the same damn cafe, waiting on a meeting, because I'm THAT autistic -- I'll look you in the eye, tell you what I'm going to do, do it as my Twitter block list blows their brains out one by one[1], and post harder every damn time I wake up annoyed about fascist bullshit.)
Because in real life, in America at least, being a "hacktivist" isn't anything like "Swordfish"[2-NSFW]
You sit in the corner of a basement bar in the Midwest, pounding brown liquor because despite being one of the most powerful hackers in the world, because folks who met you as a child refuse to hire you for anything that would take you out of precarity, then try to label you as a sped or a spy when you stick up for others who feel that way because they're all overwhelmingly folks being exploited while here on a visa, despite actually trying to do their schoolwork[3].
(Meanwhile, over in the education department, they were handing out bullshit doctorates to friends of the PRC left AND right to the few who didn't cheat on the TOEFL[4].)
Anyways, there I go, mansplaining technology policy again.
To swing it back to the topic at hand:
VPNs are cool and good. You can use them to just get a magnet link and srt file, then pick someplace you don't need to sign into the wifi that's FAST to get what you need in the time it takes to finish a cappichino with a cutesy little heart in it.
Anyways, there I go, mainsplainin' technology policy again despite never even having done an entire PhD -- sorry for forgetting to get an opt in :-)
Indian VPN policy is terrible as are the chilling effects it will have on what some used to term "civil society", if such a thing exists[4], especially since India used to be a contrast the cyberpunk hellscape that is China. (What are ya gonna do, make the entire country into Xinjiang[5]? They'll have another cultural revolution, or several constructed in parallel, if you keep that behavior up!)
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to definitely not violate the Logan Act like I promised that drunken Canadian[5].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme
[1] What part of "I don't want to give any more money to abusers, get with the program or get in the ground with Jeffrey Epstein" was unclear? Be specific! https://www.vice.com/en/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-an-oral-history-of-something-awful and https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7dmqb/richard-lowtax-kyanka-founder-of-something-awful-is-dead-at-45
[2] NSFW: "Swordfish - breaking code in 60" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atbjI_BIMXc
[3] Here's a good longread, start at the beginning but 3 is the best one https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-side/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Police_Files
[5] Spoiler alert: not gonna marry my way out of my home county due to literal jack booted thugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act
Hackers is ok. If you want to re-calibrate your cringe-o-meter with respect to movies that involve "hacking", see Swordfish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordfish_(film)).
tl;dr: I love Sneakers, and I love Hackers, and I love The Matrix, for entirely different reasons, and I don't think your criticism is warranted.
I hear what you're saying, but I'm a completely uncool nerdy software engineer, and I *ADORE the Hackers and Matrix aesthetics.
Both are not set in the real world, remember. Hackers is a semi-idealized Generation X view of disruption and techno (technology AND music)-fueled youthful exuberance.
And the hackers in the Matrix were hackers that saw through the Matrix, and literally hacked their reality to know kung fu, gunplay, and change the world around them.
When done right (and Swordfish is a good example of when it isn't), it can be a hyper-stylized love letter to the concepts. Not all cinema needs to be "realistic" and "grounded".
I never really got why Hackers was always lumped in with Wargames and Sneakers. The vibe of Hackers always seemed way different, with all the "cool dudes wearing sunglasses" and skateboards and flamboyant outfits and EDM music. I mean I like the movie, but it was less of a realistic "computer hacking" movie and more of a "too-cool people partying" movie, much more like Swordfish.
Yes, exactly. And them knowing which relay points the NSA had tracked. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great film, but I feel like because it's a great film overall, technical-minded folks sweep all the technical bullshit in it under the rug. Whereas a film that everyone can agree is hot garbage, like Swordfish, gets ridiculed for having ridiculous crap in it, while Sneakers is (rightly so, I think) given a pass.
Sneakers is one of the few hacking-related movies that I can really enjoy, because it doesn't come off as pretentious the way that others do (to me, at least).
It was unapologetically nerdy; it doesn't try to "be cooler than it is". The filmmakers didn't feel compelled to include a scene filmed in a nightclub (like Swordfish or all 3 Matrix movies). They didn't feel compelled to gussy up their characters in absurd costumes (like Hackers or, again, all 3 Matrix movies). The plot and the characters were interesting enough on their own.
The result was that I never felt like they were talking down to me or pandering to me. As a side benefit, I'd argue that Sneakers has aged much better than other hacker movies have.
>Better than even WarGames,
Well, WarGames was early, so it has that, but otherwise is a naive 80s teen movie, and the hacking is... well...
The Matrix is decent, but is basically an action movie with some wholesale "philosophy" thrown in.
Swordfish is not even worthy of a mention. And Live Free or Die Hard is downhill of Swordfish.
Hackers is decent-ish, if one ignores the depiction of hacking.
Sneakers is not very good, but better (and with better actors) than all the above.
>I always considered Sneakers a spy movie rather than a hacker movie
Well, one of the main hacker employments is spying, no?
Better than even WarGames, The Matrix or Blackhat? Better than Swordfish or Live Free or Die Hard? Hackers even?
I always considered Sneakers a spy movie rather than a hacker movie, properly sandwiched in a triple-feature between Three Days of the Condor and Spy Game.
Remember the amazing/terrible hacker movie Swordfish?
You just described it. Maybe now other world powers need their own domestic equivalents. Or if they already do, then something that’s a bit more overt.
You’re not alone. I did the same and recall the cost being similar to what you mentioned.
Also brings back memories of movies like Swordfish that made being into computers cool, even though in hindsight these movies were super cheesy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordfish_(film)
Wargames is a great hacking movie. The ending is a little meh, but the old-school tech is fantastic. It inspired the video game DEFCON.
Sneakers is another great movie. It seems a lot more faithful to how hacking works in real life: as you said it's mostly about social engineering, not how fast you can type. And the device in the movie is at least somewhat plausible. A mathematician could in theory discover a critical vulnerability in cryptography and build it into a standalone electronic device.
Hackers is awful. I don't get the appeal at all. I'll never understand why this movie is so popular. I'd put it right up there with Swordfish in terms of nonsensical computer voodoo.
> I've long said that if I ever struck it stupid rich, I'd buy a mall to live in.
> It would still have stores. I'd pay to have those stores stocked. Ideally it would have a 90s-era movie theater in it, too. But otherwise it would be empty.
Remember that 90s kid movie 'Blank Check?' I wrote a short fan art film script as a 13 year old that followed a similar premise, the origin of the funds were that the kid was a 'hacker' so the kid stole the funds from a crooked stockbroker firm trying to launder their money and ended up taking so much he ended up living in an abandoned mall and 'sold warez' out of the stores with various business models.. I recently saw the notebook and I had clearly recently just saw that movie with Angelina Jolie and Swordfish when I wrote that as that was around the time I had just discovered Newsgroups.
I somehow managed to get to the beginning of the 2nd act and just forgot about it entirely until the day I re-read it, haha. Which for being 13 was more resolve than I thought I had.
Swordfish is right at the bottom of my realistic-hacker-movies list.
Didn’t swordfish have some manually “hack” 128bit encryption in 2 minutes or something stupid?
Swordfish seemed like the most out of touch of any hackers movie I’ve seen.
I tried Swordfish again and just couldn’t get in to it. I’ve had that feeling about a lot of movies from my teens.
This is a reference to the ridiculous scene from the 2001 movie Swordfish where Hugh Jackman is writing a program to hack into a bank network.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Ds9CeG-VY
Have you ever seen the movie "Swordfish"?
I wouldn't do that to them. They have a right to interview how they want. I just wasn't good enough. They were looking for someone who could think on their feet under pressure in the moment and I'm not that guy.
I need a quiet place to sit and think something through and plan it out. It is why I did well on the test portion but not on site surrounded by interrogators. In those kind of situations I kind of feel like I'm the in the movie Swordfish where they're like, "Hack that server you have sixty seconds! (gun to head)" The difference is, I would have been dead.
I'm sad that you failed to mention the original /Hackers/ movie as well as /Swordfish/ -- two staples of Defcon movie nights.
> I take representing digital culture in film very seriously in lieu of having grown up in a world of very badly researched user interface greeble. I cringed during the part in Hackers (1995) when a screen saver with extruded "equations" is used to signify that the hacker has reached some sort of neural flow or ambiguous destination. I cringed for Swordfish and Jurassic Park as well.
Jurassic Park's infamous scene was actually UNIX though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager)
There was a Linux port too - but not used that in something like 10 years so no idea if it still compiles.
Yes, one maybe two pass/fail questions at random, $200k in a suitcase, clock ticking, pride/family/livelihood on the line, (unintentionally) smug host watching your every move. Any problem is trivial easy once you've solved it ten times.
The otherwise ridiculous film Swordfish has a similar scene with higher stakes.
Ex-hacker is in desperate situation, agrees (reluctantly) to perform one more hack in exchange for getting out of said desperate situation, is the Neuromancer-ripped plot of many a bad hacker movie (Swordfish and Blackhat certainly qualify). Take away the tech and you have a pretty standard heist-film plot going back before Neuromancer.
Quite probably, and it'd probably be cheaper too; ball bearings are kinda precision things and the processes that make things like gravel or nails probably cost less.
That said, if someone was really set on creating the opening scene of the movie Swordfish, they could make those ball bearings deadly if they got them going fast enough. A 3/8" ball bearing moving at a few hundred meters per second has enough energy to fuck up persons and property. I didn't pick those numbers completely at random -- 3/8" is about 9.5mm and common 9mm handgun rounds have velocities in the 300-400 m/s range.
Edit: I want to call attention to other replies to this comment pointing out that ball bearings can be good shrapnel for other reasons I'd not considered. Today I learned a thing.
Hackers has a couple scenes like that, I don't have a problem with the device.
But in Swordfish it's completely ancillary to the movie that it's computer hacking that's going on. The goal is money, not any part of any "hacker ethos" or anything.
Oh grief, Swordfish is laugh out loud hilarious. I cannot for the life of me think of a movie that tries so hard to be one of the cool kids.
In what way was swordfish like Sneakers/Hackers? The latter are cyberpunk-ish, a bit ideological.
Swordfish is more of a "caper" movie with a cheap tacked-on hacking bit. Bad guy wants money, uses hacker and LOTS OF CRIME to get it.
And I think all of us here love hacker movies.
Sneakers, Hackers, Swordfish, etc. :)
Huh. Cool to see this get some space on the HN front page. I created the Tumblr https://moviecode.tumblr.com/ a few years ago and I've started this channel to go a little deeper into some of the examples. Hope people like it.
Next up: two episodes of Knight Rider, Westworld (1973) and Swordfish.
Hackers killed the Hollywood hacker. (Hackers as in people, not Hackers the film.) Dominic Sena, in his director's commentary for Swordfish, stated that the people who were likely to complain about the inaccuracy of the hacking shown in his movie were nerds who ultimately didn't matter. In this era where the internet response can make or break a film or TV show, the nerds do matter and directors go the extra mile to please them. This started before Mr. Robot. Think Tron: Legacy.
I'm very sad that Swordfish was never mentioned in this article. My developer friends all have a soft spot for the ridiculous world created in that film.
Their idea of a great hacker comes from movies such as Swordfish
> I agree that I should have the choice, but if I do choose to use something insecure with full knowledge of it's insecurity, can't I be free to do that?
But you are free to do that, aren't you? Last time I checked, cyber-police wasn't going around and giving people fines for not using a TOR client.
As a matter of fact, given that you are at least aware of the concepto of "convenience tradeoff", you probably are in the minority that is qualified to exercise such freedom responsibly. You may still make a mistake and land in the "too little" (or, less likely, "too much") camp on any individual decision... but most of the time you should be making the right calls more often than not.
When people in the know say "Everyone needs security and privacy", they are not talking about you. They are talking about the guy who has seen the Swordfish movie, though it was an embelished but otherwise accurate depiction of reality, and believe that a hacker is a younger version of Wolverine with super powered intuition that can type some gibberish @500wpm until they happen to run into your password. This people is not knowledgeable enough to reason about the tradeoffs (even if they know how to reason, the lack of priors and the wrong but otherwise sensible assumptions just kill them).
We are talking about having minimally secure defaults, for the sake of those that cannot (or will not) set their own configurations.
There's a lot of motte/bailey'ing[1] going on in the climate change debate.
There is tons of histrionics and scare mongering out there. I particular remember during the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen, art installations illustrating how the city would be under water if sea level rose 7 meters, which is the estimated rise if all of the ice on Greenland melts. The Day After Tomorrow, not to mention An Inconvenient Truth.
While there certainly are and were voices critical of these things and their dubious relationship with the science (whether settled or consensus or not), their usefulness in advancing the agenda appears to be appreciated more than their role in misrepresenting the science. This is an actual quote from a scientist listed in the "criticism" section of the "The Day After Tomorrow" Wikipedia page[2]: "I'm heartened that there's a movie addressing real climate issues. But as for the science of the movie, I'd give it a D minus or an F. And I'd be concerned if the movie was made to advance a political agenda.". This is an actual scientist on the record believing that TDAT is "addressing real climate issues". That is like applauding Swordfish[3] for addressing cyber security issues. That is the Bailey.
Then, years after, when these things perhaps look a bit more absurd (and some very specific predictions turned out not to come through, at least not as unambiguously as expected), we get "The IPCC's 2001 report was for <1 meter rise over the entire century ... Do you have evidence that it wasn't just kooks saying what you suggested?"
That's the Motte.
You can't have your cake and eat it, too. If it was only kooks saying it, certainly none of the non-kooks bothered throughly rebutting them at the time.
1:http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/09/motte-and-bailey-doctrines/
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After_Tomorrow#Criticism
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordfish_(film)
I always felt it was weird that in the west there's this clear sharp line between porn and not, whereas in Japan things seemed a lot more blurred - it was normal for celebrities to become porn stars and vice versa, for game franchises that started as porn to get a cleaned-up Playstation instalment, for manga artists to release unofficial porn versions of their own work. I remember watching the movie Swordfish and being struck by how much the one incongruous topless scene felt like something you'd see in a Japanese work. So maybe we're seeing some kind of convergence?
Not to band-wagon it up, but I agree that Swordfish felt like an overly produced Mad TV sketch of a techno-action movie. Expensive cast - cringe worthy though.
What, no WarGames? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/
Granted, that one's more about the cold war than about hacking, but Swordfish is more about... um... I'm not exactly sure what that one's about...
This reminds me of a scene from the movie "Swordfish", starring Hugh Jackman, John Travolta, and Halle Berry. :-)
Heh, the ticking clock makes it feel like that scene from the movie "Swordfish".
(Also I found the advanced questions much easier than the beginner ones.)
The Matrix is probably my favorite movie of all time. I've watched my DVD copy so many times that the DVD is wearing out (eg, has scratches, etc.) and I just had to buy a new DVD of it.
Otherwise, I like Hackers a lot (despite the unrealistic aspects), as well as Anti-trust. War Games is another of my favorites. Also, Tron and Tron:Legacy.
Swordfish is also entertaining in its own way.
Seem to remember it being popular in Hollywood.
Enemy of the State, The Simpsons.. even AAA movies like Swordfish.. "The Carnivore program, reading every ISP subscribers email- I did what every federal judge wouldn't do"
Because when you watched the movie Swordfish, you said to yourself, "that's how a real hacker does it" instead of "what a load of crap", right?
> I thought the same of the hacking scenes in Swordfish... then I realised that the movie isn't meant for me.
No, I get that. But using this logic, BBT shouldn't be making any attempt to get the physics right either. After all, it's not a show for physicists.
Why the inconsistency?
I thought the same of the hacking scenes in Swordfish... then I realised that the movie isn't meant for me. It was meant for a mainstream audience that has no idea what hacking is - and instead they get a visual representation of 'hard, technical'. I imagine the same thing goes with that episode - I haven't seen it, but I'm guessing that tenure was just used as a mere plot device rather than a topic to explore.
There was a pretty good movie that made you think about that type of situation, "Unthinkable" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914863/
It's like the question in Swordfish, would you be willing to sacrifice the life of an innocent to save 10,000 people's lives? How about 2 innocents? What about 500?
Once you start to consider making those kinds of trade offs it's a very slippery slope. It seems to me the only correct answer is 0. There is no acceptable trade off to try and counter irrational actions.
Maybe add the movie Sneakers and maybe Swordfish?
I grow weary of reading these "hacking," "cyberspy," etc articles. They always read like a plot of a bad action movie (Hackers, Swordfish, etc) rather than what people who actually work in the sector (IT, Security, even programming) have to deal with day to day.
Just once, I'd love to read an article that talks in specifics, like how they got in (e.g. via exploit XYZ), how they spread (e.g. via hole in network policy XYZ), and what was done about it.
Also, if this super-top-secret information is so vital to the US's national security then why was it in the hands of a private company? I might be misunderstanding something here, but it seems less like information vital to national security and more like information vital to that company's future success (i.e. industrial espionage).
I cannot help but wonder if someone at this company (e.g. former CIA director) made a few phone calls and turned an industrial espionage incident into a national security incident in order to cover their arses.
You mean like in "Swordfish"? Now that was a film that could be measured in facepalms per minute.
In The Matrix Reloaded, Trinity uses nmap and then an OpenSSH exploit that was published a couple months before the film officially opened in theaters. Contrast this with Swordfish, where you get lines like (I'm paraphrasing from memory), "We have a DS3, allowing you to access eight systems simultaneously." Ugh, just hit stop and go outside.
Back on topic, Tron: Legacy to me feels like a highly technological father/son movie, in the same way that Google is a highly technological advertising company. So it seems we're already living in the future. "The Matrix has you..."
I don't know if you're likely to get many useful responses here, but I'll offer a few specific pieces of advice on tropes to avoid:
1) films often use the "aha, now I'm really serious" gimmick, wherein the "hacker" is now talking about some technique that he hadn't used before. There are rarely authentic justifications for this in reality. See, for example, the last 20 minutes of "Swordfish" ... "That's 2048 bit RSA... not even I could crack that!". Please don't do that.
2) Anecdotal: the best hackers I know shun jargon. Jargon-heavy dialogue always feels condescending. Anywhere you feel tempted to use impressive-sounding jargon, consider that the hacker would consider such a thing commonplace and would consider it implicit in any conversation with another hacker. Another analogy: you wouldn't write Bruce Lee in a role where he expounds in detail about his punches and kicks as he's fighting; apply the same aesthetic and you'll do fine.
3) The technical details of "Hacker Speak" are almost impossible to make authentic to your audience because there are so many different specializations. I could wax on about, e.g., high performance numerical computations but wouldn't know how to synthesize authentic talk about cryptography. On the other hand, I would probably be able to pick out inauthentic talk about cryptography pretty easily. Spotting fakes is a lot easier than creating plausible technical dialog. My recommendation would be to elide as much of the technical story as possible, and focus any programming-related dialog on the "three chief virtues" of a programmer: "laziness, impatience, and hubris" (coined by Larry Wall, I believe). To put it in more accessible terms: your hacker should always be thinking "How can I accomplish this task with the least human work possible (laziness)? How can I engineer it to go faster (impatience)? Is there really any reason why I couldn't write a program to solve problem X (hubris)?"
Anyway, I've had some experience with the film/TV industry (lived in LA for many years) so if you have any specific questions I'm happy to expand in email (see my profile for my address).
Good luck!
This is what they call this a 1024 bit Vernam Cypher in the movie "Swordfish".
There's a lot of this in the film Swordfish. I actually quite like this bit a lot, it makes me smile. Hacking represented by some kind of floating 3D CAD model. Hugh Jackman also types so fast he physically sweats.
There's a whole list of this type of tech in films & screenshots - http://apcmag.com/top-10-worst-movie-tech-moments.htm
While not exactly what you're looking for, I find myself going back to http://nanocrowd.com quite often for movie recommendations.
They don't do TV shows, but their niche categories are usually pretty solid.
It works well if you can give them an example of the type of movie you feel like watching. For instance, I wanted to watch a cheesy, nerdy, thriller earlier tonight, something along the lines of Hackers and it suggested The Net, Antitrust, TRON, Live Free or Die Hard, The Matrix, Swordfish, etc. Exactly what I was in the mood for.
This reads like it was written by someone who saw the film swordfish and thought it was accurate. I particularly found the breathless 'he could break in to almost any on-line bank at any time' stuff a bit hard to swallow. There was nothing terribly chilling about the story.
Ah The movie Swordfish!
Hollywood is almost universally terrible at hacker movies, unfortunately, dating back to when they perverted Frankenstein. I haven't seen Swordfish, but what I've heard doesn't make me optimistic.
Real Genius and Ghostbusters are two pretty good hacker movies. I hear Buckaroo Banzai is in the same ballpark, but I haven't seen the whole thing. I also enjoyed Flight of the Navigator, but it's really more about magic than about hacking.
'Swordfish' was 9 years ago and 'Hackers' was 15.
'The Social Network' made me giggle in geek happiness when every glimpse of technical detail the was a legitimate tech shoutout. The following is a screenshot from 'Tron: Legacy' http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101111213709/tron/images/f/f9/Tron-Legacy_SolarOS-frame.png
When computers were exotic, any hack could invoke utter wizardry and magic. The creative types behind modern movies are sufficiently aware and sufficiently confident the median American will be aware that the serious shit that happens to make computers work is a lot of typing plain text on flat, stationary screens, and some wonderful dramatic devices have been developed to extract accessible engagement from technical scenes beyond the old attempts at whiz-bang shiny awe (which never really worked anyway). So today you see a lot of bash, because the producers need text, and the graphic artists are like "why not make this legit?"
You know I understand the motive behind Hollywood's attempts to propel the story with flashy interfaces and completely bogus mechanics behind a 'hacking the mainframe', but there are times where attempts to engage the audience go from "an honest attempt to blur the line between fantasy story telling and a surreal experience meant to obfuscate the non-geeks" to complete and total cruft (pun intended).
Even after seeing the movie Hackers a thousand and one times, Swordfish still remains my all-time favorite offender.
And apparently the motion graphics artists who create those interface animations are paid a killing. Maybe I'm in the wrong industry?
Perhaps they were acting out that gods awful movie Swordfish.
Then again, I really do not want to know.
I think you mis-parsed my Sneakers comment. Sneakers is an awesome film. Swordfish, while ok to watch if there's nothing else on can't hold a candle to Sneakers.
I'm pretty sure Swordfish was one of the films he was slamming. The movie is rife with "hacking the TLA with a gun to one's head". Not to mention, the visual programming bit was pretty ludicrous.
And Swordfish is a great movie about being a hacker... specifically the common recruiting process.
On a more serious note, I do agree with you. Some decent movies with a office environment/work theme: Boiler Room (2000), Duplicity (2009), Glengarry Glen Ross, Other People's Money (1991), Swimming with Sharks and Wall Street (1987).
I've also enjoyed the dramatized real-life stories in Rogue Trader and Barbarians at The Gate.
For me, it's a close second to "Swordfish" for movie depictions of computer programming (at least the way I do it at home).
Swordfish; if nothing for the totally cool monitor setup he had at Gabriel's place.
Alien; the original- the next couple of movies in the series were okay but the first I think is a classic in form of technology and all that good stuff. If you watch it, it may seem a bit old-school for our time, but for their time that was pretty cool! Finding a solution to space travel at light-year speed? Come-on- that's awesome.
Stargate; another one for space travel, but overall it was kind of corny- I just liked how the Egyptians, or whoever, discovered a way to transport across galaxies.
Enemy of the State; cool NSA tech stuff.
Deja Vu; the ability to go back in time only four days earlier or less... I like their setup and how they explained the plausibility of the technology actually coming to fruition.
For me, I think working on systems and programming comes down to two different types of music. If I'm performing some system maintenance or deep system work or related programming, I find that techno/dance/trance helps... specifically soundtracks to some of my favorite movies that had techno in them are great for getting the draining mood effect that system programming can sometimes have on me. Miami Vice soundtrack has some great tracks that when listening keeps me feeling like I'm /solving a problem/ when I'm deep into the mix... Hackers, the movie soundtrack, is another good one that I like; Swordfish is another good one.
When it comes to creativity and problem solving at the development level, I find that like others here, either no music or classical music on low volume assists the concentration. Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart, etc. I truly find classical helpful... I read once that it actually stimulates the proper receptors in the brain that involve critical thinking, but I'm unable to find that link as a source. I stumbled upon classical years ago at random I think... I never liked it before then and I'm certain for some it can be an acquired taste.
Cheers