DATE REVIEWED: 9/15/23
TITLE: Hackers
BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)
PRODUCTION YEAR: 1995 MGM Home Entertainment / United Artists Pictures
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: This movie takes place in Seattle in 1988. It began with the SWAT team breaking into the Murphy house and arresting Dade Murphy, aka Zero Cool, for committing several criminal acts of a malicious nature by using his intelligence to a destructive and antisocial end. Dade’s computer virus crashed 1,507 systems, including Wall Street trading systems causing a seven-point drop in the New York Stock Market. Child genius Dade was eleven-years-old at the time and his parents were fined $45,000 and Dade was put on probation and prohibited from owning or operating a computer or touch-tone phone until his eighteenth birthday. A gang of reporters shoved cameras in young Dade’s face as he and his family walked to the car. Seven years later on Dade’s 18th birthday, his mom (dad no longer in the picture) asked him what he was doing up so late in his room. He said he was hacking into the TV network and Mom told him to finish up and get to bed. In his room, Dade had a professional hacker setup that he used to access private information from companies he targeted and even made a phone call to one pretending to be an employee asking another employee to read the serial number off his modem. The other employee believed Dade’s disguise and thus it helped Dade delete the shows that were programmed to televise and replace them with what Dade wanted to see. Dade removed an “America First,” episode from the television network and replaced it with “The Outer Limits.” Dade then encountered a hacker named Acid Burn who hacked him hacking the television network. The two hackers fought for control of what they were hacking sending threatening messages back and forth until Dade lost and his connection was terminated. The next morning, mom Lauren asked Dade if he had done anything he shouldn’t have been doing on his computer because he had pulled another all-nighter and she was concerned that he didn’t like girls, and he replied no and that he was still virgin. While Dade was in the shower, Lauren shouted at him for hooking the phone up to the computer again and told him that if he messed up again he would never get into college. Lauren apologized that they had to move during Dade’s senior year in high school (Dade being 18), but she got a new job so they relocated to New York City. At school, Kate Libby helped Dade get to his class at his new school and told him there was a big pool up on the roof. Dade went up there, but it turned out he had been tricked and there was no pool, just a group of other kids were on the roof and it started pouring rain and Dade was stuck out there because he didn’t leave the door ajar. Ramón Sánchez saw Dade switching his classes to match Libby’s by hacking into the school system, and so then Ramón approached Dade and introduced himself as the Fantom Phreak, the king of the NyNex game. Ramón slapped Joey Pardella across the face because he called Ramón a dude (when Ramón was dressed somewhat feminine) and told Joey to stop letting his mama dress him. Dade went to the Cyberdelia arcade that night which Ramón gave him a flyer for and was the first person to ever beat Kate at a game and he did it on his first try and Ramón told him that he just made an enemy for life. That night, Dade changed the school sprinkler time so it came on when school was in session. In class, Kate quoted her mom Ruth Libby as saying “God gave men brains larger than dogs so they wouldn’t hump women’s legs at cocktail parties.” The teacher questioned if Kate’s mom was qualified as a significant author of the 20th century, and Kate replied that Ruth’s last book (a woman self-help book) sold 2 million copies. Emmanuel Goldstein quoted Ozzy Osbourne as saying “Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.” Lauren told Dade to fill out his college application and unpack while she went back to work and would be home late. Back at Cyberdelia, the four hackers (Dade, Ramón, Joey and Emmanuel, aka Cereal Killer) sat around smoking and Joey bragged about accidentally hacking into an ATM in Idaho that spit out $700 into the street. Ramón said Joey was dumb for doing that from his house because the FBI could track him, and then it was said that the four main passwords people used were “God, sex, secret and love.” They suggested that Joey do a seriously righteous hack, such as going in the back door to hack into a Gibson, which was a supercomputer used to look for oil and do physics. Joey, encouraged by his hacker mates, then hacked into the Ellingson Mineral Corporation (EMC) system and put the password “God,” on their screen for the security to see. The Gibson security guard called Eugene Belford, who wanted to be called The Plague, and said they had a hacker. Before Joey aborted, he got proof that he was in the system by copying part of a garbage file onto a floppy disk. The Plague showed up and was able to locate the hacker and called for the system’s control ops so he could trace the call of the hacker. Joey’s mom then banged on his chain locked door he quickly tried to spray the room to get rid of the smoke smell before he unlocked it. She barged in and shut Joey’s computer off, which aborted his hacking garbage file download and she told her son to go to bed. The Plague was able to trace the call and notify his pal with the federal authorities. Joey took the floppy disk that partially copied and hid it in the ventilation system in his bedroom. The hackers then showed up to hang out at Paul Cook’s (Lord Nikon) house, and they all watched on TV as the US Secret Service Special Agent Richard Gill talked about how hackers were extremely dangerous to the world so he was called the Hacker Enemy Number One. They switched the channel and watched Razor and Blade on Hack the Planet who taught them that hacking was more than a crime it was a survival trait. Razor and Blade demonstrated how to hack a payphone for free. In the next scene, Joey sang Wild One in the shower with his headphones on. When he shut the water off, he was apprehended by Secret Service agents and brought to the couch to sit on with a towel around his waist while they took his computer out of the house and his mom screamed trying to figure out what was going on. As Joey jumped up to grab his computer, the towel fell down and the Joey’s bare butt was exposed. Agent Gill did an interview with Jennifer from the local news outside Joey’s apartment as Joey was taken down the stairs behind him. Agent Gill said that penetrated and ravaged delicate private and publicly owned computer systems infecting them with viruses and stealing sensitive materials for their own ends. He added that the hackers were terrorists. There was an EMC corporate meeting held to discuss the hacked security and it was pointed out that female Margo Wallace had used God as her password and thus the hacker got in. Eugene Belford (the Plague) told Her Holiness Margo to change her password and explained to the others that the ballast program for the supertanker training model mistakenly thought the vessel was empty and flooded its tanks so the boat flipped over as a result of the virus being in the Gibson computer system (that The Plague was paid to prevent from happening). The virus video was then played that used an anime face from Da vinci’s human man sketch stating that unless $5 million was transferred to the following numbered account within a week, the hacker would capsize 5 tankers in the Ellingson fleet. Eugene said that Leonardo da Vinci was the virus, and the problem was they had 26 ships at sea and didn’t know which 5 were infected with the virus. Eugene went on to say that they couldn’t put the ships on manual anymore because they were completely computerized controlled and relied on satellite navigation that linked them to the EMC’s network and the virus wherever they were in the world. Eugene said they had a gifted and talented security officer who was able to trace the call and the Secret Service picked up the hacker and computer so then Eugene could obtain the information necessary to destroy the virus. Privately, after the corporate meeting, Eugene and Margo Wallace conversed and he told her that he (Eugene) created da Vinci so he could get the Secret Service involved to seize the downloaded garbage file on disc from Joey’s computer because Eugene couldn’t do that himself. It turned out Eugene created the virus that would cause an ecological worldwide disaster because it was worth $25 million and he was using the virus to blame on the kid being arrested while Eugene and Margo conspired to steal the $25 million they secretly were stealing from the company using a worm. Eugene said he could destroy the virus at any time and didn’t need a code, but it was the perfect cover because he needed to figure out how much of the Garbage file was copied. Margo told Eugene to get the file otherwise he would lose all of his toys. Later on, Eugene met with Agent Gill and said he never found the virus on any of the files on Joey’s computer so Joey was either smart or stupid. Agent Gill told Eugene that Joey either stashed it somewhere or had an accomplice, and they would release Joey until his indictment and track the kid with undercover agents to see if they could find the missing disk. Agents Ray and Bob assigned to babysit Joey discussed the hacker creed where the hackers said they were the victims and didn’t believe in racial or religious bias and there were too many hackers out there to stop them. One agent said it was cool and the other thought it was commie B.S. At school, Ramón and Emmanuel told Dade that Joey was arrested and his mom grounded him for three lifetimes so he couldn’t be around his hacker buddies. They invited Dade to a party at Kate’s house that night and he agreed. Agent Gill then brought The Plague (who was currently playing virtual reality games in his office with his headset) a file on Dade and thought they had something. Minutes later, the Secret Service forced their way into Dade’s apartment when he opened the door to their knock (and Lauren wasn’t home) and told him to shut up as they roughed the teen up and pointed guns at him. The Plague was there, and they told Dade they didn’t find anything in his room when they searched it. The Plague told the Secret Service to leave so they could have a private conversation, and he was in awe of the virus that Dade created when he was 11 that destroyed so many lives in one day. Eugene explained that hackers had no friends and family and they were their own individual country with temporary allies and enemies. The Plague asked Zero Cool if they could be allies so they could make a deal, and Dade replied no because he didn’t play well with others. That didn’t sit well with Eugene so he took the baseball bat he was holding and use it to smash the electronics around Dade’s room while the feds stood outside the door waiting. Eugene said that if Dade went to jail then he wouldn’t be able to get into colleges and would be exiled from everyone and everything and Eugene left and said he would be in touch. The Secret Service agents then left with The Plague. In the next scene, Kate barged into Dade’s bedroom, unzipped her jacket with nothing underneath it with her bare breasts exposed, and pushed Dade down on the bed and started kissing him passionately. However, the Secret Service men then came and pulled Kate off from Dade and handcuffed him while he was still in bed. They took both teens out of the room while he was still in bed with The Plague present, and then Dade woke up from his nightmare and ended up going to Kate’s party. It switched scenes with Joey at an addict meeting telling everyone that he wasn’t an addict as he smoked a cigarette and guzzled coffee. At Kate’s house party (no parents of hers around the entire movie) hackers Nikon, Killer, Fantom and Cool were in a room and shut the lights off to stare at a virus on the computer. Nearby on the bed lay Kate and her boyfriend taking their clothes off about to have sex with the hackers watching. Because the other boys all made noises, Kate jumped up and was then more interested in the virus she was creating on her computer and told them that she wanted to triple the RAM as though she wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary a few seconds ago and left her boyfriend hanging. It was then revealed that Kate was Acid Burn, which made Crash (Override) and Burn. Kate wasn’t happy that Dade invaded her turf that was why she booted Dade out of O TV when he was hacking. Meanwhile, Margo showed up at Eugene’s crib and he told her that he disguised himself as an Alabama state trooper and penetrated the FBI NCIC to look at mugshots. He went on to explain that the FBI computer held the files of 20 million Americans and he bragged that he just hacked into it as he zipped up his coworker’s dress. Eugene said he got access to every file ever stored on Dade Murphy’s parents and went on to read the history so it turned out ever since the incident from Dade hacking at 11 the parents struggled with their relationship and ended up finally getting into a custody battle and divorcing the previous year where Dade wanted to live with his mom. The Plague said that if they got the mother, they got the boy. Dade and Kate then agreed upon a hacker competition bet where if Kate won she would make Dade her slave and if Dade won he would take Kate on a date even though she said she didn’t do dates. The contest was to hassle (harass) Secret Service Agent Gill and to get one back for Joey, and the other hackers laid out the rules and told the two opponents that they were finished when the backers said they were finished and the others would decide who won. They started in Chinatown using an ATM to hack Richard Gill’s account, and Kate destroyed Gill’s credit cards. It was when Gill was out at dinner with a female that the waiter brought him his credit card that was declined and cut the card in half at the table. Dade then put an ad on a dating site using Agent Gill’s profile with the description with him as a white cross-dresser (when he was a black man) and transvestites welcome. They attached Gill’s real phone numbers, and later on in his office it showed Agent Gill’s phone lines lit up from perverted from mentally ill perverted sex addict callers wanting to spank and lick Gill. On a rooftop, the hackers used a laptop and typed in Agent Richard Gill’s personal information again and created fake arrest records in the police system for traffic violations and DUIs. In the next scene, a black police officer roughly arrested the black agent Gill on a traffic stop for outstanding warrants in the system that were illegally put there by the hackers. In another hack, Dade filed in the county clerk’s system a death record that Agent Gill died so when Agent Gill asked for his accounting records, it showed that he was deceased. At that point, Kate and Dade were both tied with 60 points each, and the two gamer hackers changed the stakes where Kate had to wear a dress on their date if Dade won, but if Kate won Dade had to wear a dress. Later on, Kate had a queer dream of Dade being in a vinyl red dress and petted by her and she actually liked it. The next day at school at Kate’s locker, she showed Dade the red bra and panties that she got for him to wear in the event he lost. That afternoon, Dade, wearing a half-shirt, signed for a UPS package at his apartment at home. It was a laptop from The Plague and then The Plague called Dade “Zero Cool,” and explained the new world order where governments and corporations needed people like Eugene and Dade because they were samurai and keyboard cowboys. All the people that didn’t know what was going on were the cattle, and Eugene told Dade he needed his help and Dade needed Eugene’s help so to think about it but in the meantime to enjoy the laptop. Eugene asked Dade to get the missing disk that Joey hid. Meanwhile, Joey’s mom ungrounded him and Joey jumped up to check and see if the disk was still there and it was. Joey retrieved the floppy disk and took it outside to the park to meet up with Ramón. Joey showed Ramón the floppy disk, and Ramón told him that a Garbage file was always full of junk but Joey argued that this one wasn’t and it was hot because the Secret Service were after him. Sitting on a bench were the two Secret Service agents assigned to Joey were subtly taking pictures of the two teens talking without them knowing the agents were there. Ramón recognized the Nikon camera pointed at them and told Joey they had a tail, so they both split up and ran with the Secret Service pursuing them. Ramón had the disk and used his gum to attach the floppy disk to the back of a wall on a condom dispenser inside the boys bathroom locker room at school. Ramón then raced home to remove anything hacker-wise from his room that would be suspicious if he got raided. Ramón then had a nightmare of the government coming for him, and as his mom woke him up the next morning for school and opened the blinds, gunmen came through the window and told Ramón he was under arrest for the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. Ramón’s mom started slapping him and yelling in Spanish, and he wanted to be arrested to get away from her punishment. In the jail, the officer left Ramón alone with the phone and explained to the hacker that he only got one call and left without supervising. Ramón used his one call to call Kate and told her they were asking about her and to be on alert. Ramón confirmed that Joey did hack into Ellingson because whatever was on that disk was framing them all (and not happy he was in jail) and told Kate in secret code words where to find the disk. Kate went to the boys’ locker room inside the boys’ bathroom and nonchalantly retrieved the disk from behind a condom machine and walked out holding an actual condom so all the boys that stared at her wouldn’t be suspicious of what she was really doing. Kate and Cereal Killer Emmanuel then showed up at Dade’s house where his mom let them in to see Dade in his bedroom. Emmanuel said they had a wake-up call from the Nintendo generation and they demanded free access to data and that came with some responsibility. He then said he talked and did things like a child when he was a child, but he put away childish things when he became a man, which was his version of quoting 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 11, to try to get Kate and Dade to correspond on civil terms with each other and get help for their hacker teammates that was jailed. The two decided to work together to figure out what was on the floppy. Kate explained that Ramón and Joey were being framed and needed help from Dade to find out what was on the disk, and he said he couldn’t afford to be arrested because anybody who had that disk was being put in jail. Emmanuel left so Dade and Kate could be alone, and Kate closed the bedroom door. Kate tried to be nice then and say they were on the same team and acted out of her normal character (sweet instead of mean) and asked Dade to make an extra copy of the disk and hide it in the event that she and Emmanuel got busted so they would have a backup disk that hadn’t been tampered with to give to their attorneys. Lauren interrupted because she wasn’t sure what her son was up to and told them to help themselves to anything in the fridge because Cereal Killer already did. Lauren glared at Dade where Kate couldn’t see to warn him not to do anything illegal before Lauren closed the door again. Dade told Kate he would copy the floppy disk for her. In the next scene, Dade and The Plague were conversing on the phone where Eugene told Dade that the girl had the disk and he needed Dade to get it from her. Dade reminded Eugene that he didn’t play well with others, and then Eugene told Dade to turn on his laptop and set it to receive a file because Eugene had Dade’s mom’s mugshot up on his screen from the National Crime Information Center that he wanted to show Dade. The Plague told Dade that Lauren Murphy was now a wanted felon in the state of Washington because Eugene made it up and added Lauren to the criminal system using the name Isabelle Kostic-Crosby but with Lauren’s photo and information. The charges were forgery (May 1982), embezzlement (Jan 1985), two drug convictions (possession of heroin, August 1987, and possession of crack cocaine December 1990) and she jumped parole (July 1994) so when she was arrested she wouldn’t have a trial and would go directly to jail. Eugene added that once he got the Garbage file disk, then he would erase Lauren’s criminal record that spanned several years and she would no longer be in the system as a wanted illegal. Eugene went on to say that computers didn’t lie and if Dade didn’t cooperate, his mom would be handcuffed at work and then strip-searched. Dade said if The Plague touched his mom then Dade would kill him, and Eugene told the teen not to threaten him because there were worse things than death and he could do all of them. As Lauren slept on her small makeshift bed, Dade went into her room and covered her with a blanket and then left to go to a payphone in a secluded area of the dark city. Dade called Eugene back and said he had the disk, but Kate didn’t know what was on it and she came to Dade to figure it out. Dade told Eugene to leave Kate alone because she wasn’t the one who planted the virus, and Eugene replied not to worry because Kate would be fine if she was innocent and mommy was safe now. Dade hung up the payphone and waited around several minutes for The Plague to show up and pick up the disk. Eugene arrived dressed in all black riding his skateboard and holding onto the passenger side of a car ducking down so he wouldn’t be seen on camera. Dade held up the disk, and The Plague snatched it out of Dade’s hand as he rolled by and kept going without saying a word to Dade. Eugene then turned on steam to block the train tracks pathway so Dade wasn’t able to chase after him. Dade then went to meet up with Kate, Cereal (Emmanuel) and Nikon (Paul) as they all looked at the virus and tried to decode what was on the Garbage file. They had been at it for a while, so Dade sat down to see what he could do to unscramble the virus code. They spent many hours working together (with no parents around at all) and pulled an all-nighter ordering pizza. Dade figured out that it wasn’t a virus; it was a worm that nibbled. Dade explained that one part of the data was every financial transaction that Ellingson conducted from the million dollar deals to the ten bucks some guy paid for gas and the worm ate a few cents from each transaction. Dade added that no one got caught at it because the money wasn’t really gone and it was just data being shifted around. When the worm was ready, it zipped out with the money and erased its track, and Dade said that Joey got cut off before he downloaded that part to the disk because his mom put him to bed. Dade went on to say that it already ran at twice the speed it started and at that rate it would end its run in two days, and I had already eaten about $21.8 million. Kate explained that whoever wrote the worm was using hackers Phreak, Joey and them to take the fall so they could steal the money and run. The teens (with adult Nikon) decided they needed to get the rest of the file and found out where the money was going before the worm disappeared and find out who created it. Dade exclaimed that he knew who wrote the file and it was the Ellingson security creep Eugene. Dade said he gave The Plague a copy of the disk Kate gave him, and the others weren’t happy to hear what Dade did and called it universally stupid. Kate asked Dade why he was singled out and he replied that he had a record and was known as Zero Cool. Nikon immediately recognized the name and said Dade crashed 1507 systems in one day at age 11 and it was the biggest crash in history on the front page of the New York Times on August 10, 1988. Nikon said he thought Dade was black, and then everybody was excited because they had Zero Cool in their presence as if he was a fantastic idol to worship. Kate was excluded from the excitement and said there went her chance of getting into MIT, and Dade replied he would make it up to her by hacking the Gibson. Nikon said Dade would be caught right away and the cops would find him with a smoking gun, and Dade said the f-word if he cared. Nikon went on to say that even if Dade had the password, it would take him ten minutes to get in and then he would still have to find the rest of the Garbage file and the cops would have him in five minutes. Killer said they were fried in his far-out hippie way, and Kate said never send a boy to do a woman’s job and with her they could find the file in seven minutes. Killer chimed in that with his help they could do it in six minutes, and Nikon said Jesus in vain because he had to save all their a**es because if he helped they would do it in five minutes. They all agreed to go shopping, and with a full blue moon overhead Kate and Dade used wire cutters to cut the EMC corporate fence and broke in. They fell into the dumpster together and used flashlights to search for documents, but then a security guard came outside and shouted at them. Kate shot her flare gun by the side of the security guard’s head and sending sparks around his body so the teens could escape. Meanwhile, Nikon and Killer were by a manhole with a city truck parked near it. They stole construction clothing and hard-hats but then a worker came aboveground and they shouted truck so he disappeared back into the hole thinking he was going to get run over and the hackers ran off with their stolen goods. At the Secret Service building, Emmanuel popped up out from underneath the secretary’s desk and told her the phone was alright as Agent Gill walked away and didn’t see the hacker in the office. Emmanuel walked away showing his butt crack because his pants were falling down. Meanwhile, Nikon was inside the Ellingson building using a computer and once done walked by the Plague and pretended to deliver flowers. In his office, Eugene explained to Margo that the portion of the file that the teens were able to record on file was enough to implicate both of them. Margo wasn’t happy because Eugene told her the worm was untraceable, and Eugene agreed that it was to civilians but not to other hackers. Eugene told Margo not to worry because all they had to do was launch the da Vinci virus and then Dade and Co. would be put away. Margo told Eugene he couldn’t unleash the virus, and he replied that nobody believed the guilty and by the time they realized the truth, the two of them would be long gone with all the money they stole. Eugene jumped up from his chair and told Margo there was no right and wrong, only fun and boring and a 30-year prison sentence sounded dull to him. He asked Margo who she preferred served the sentence, them or the teen hackers. The Plague then went to his computer (with the screensaver of the da Vinci man) and launched the virus, and Eugene explained to his buddy Agent Gill on the phone that the virus would go off the following morning at 10:30 a.m. and the hackers tried to get into their system again. The screen showed a Mysia tanker, and Eugene told Gill that at that point, he insisted they take more strenuous action or Ellingson Mineral would hold the Secret Service responsible. Afterwards, Gill called for arrest warrants on Kate Libby, alias Acid Burn, Emmanuel Goldstein, alias Cereal Killer, Dade Murphy, alias Crash Override also known as Zero Cool, and Paul Cook, alias Lord Nikon. Paul and Emmanuel were in the basement listening in on Agent Gill’s phone conversation saying the hackers would be picked up the following morning at 9:00 a.m. The two hackers code snoop onto them as they snoop onto us so now they knew what the Secret Service was up to. Paul called Kate and told her they had a problem with Secret Service, and all of them met up on the subway and went through the 50 passcodes they stole from the Ellingson dumpster. Emmanuel asked what the da Vinci virus was because he read a memo about how the Secret Service were going to deal with oil spills on the fourteenth if the virus was unleashed. The hackers figured out the fourteenth was the same day the worm ended its run and the oil spills hadn’t happened yet because it was the thirteenth. Kate said that was what Phreak said he was being charged with “Infecting ballast program of Ellingson tankers,” and were blaming the hackers. They were upset because they were up against a worm and a virus and they needed to figure out how to clear their names in less than 24 hours. Kate left the subway train telling the males to hang low because they had a few hours before they were arrested and Kate was going to go get some helpand would beep them. She took Dade with her, and Emmanuel told Dade…may the force be with you. Kate brought Dade to the freakish jam-packed nightclub to hook up with Razor and Blade because the two Asians were elite. Dade tried to climb onstage to talk to Razor and Blade who made an exit when a live black rapper started singing and playing head-banging music. Dade was carried around by the crowd and put on the jumbotron cams for the crowd to watch. Dade and Kate searched the building to find Razor and Blade and they ended up in the security room where the camera footage was. A robotic arm held a gun on them, and Razor and Blade came onscreen the cameras and asked Dade and Kate what they wanted and why they were there. Kate explained that a virus called da Vinci would cause oil spills at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time the following day. Dade chimed in that it was somehow connected with the worm that was stealing the money and they needed the Razor and Blade’s help to overload the Gibson and kill the da Vinci virus and download the worm program. They called Kate rabid but cute and said they were busy because a TV network that wished to remain nameless had expressed an interest in their show. Razor and Blade said the teens would need an electronic army and not just two media icons like them. They suggested the teens get on the Internet and send out a major distress signal to unite the hackers of the world, and they plotted to take care of the cops that got in their way. Dade hacked into the DMV system and made the traffic signals go haywire so the cops could be endlessly busy trying to direct traffic on the hacker’s watch. While Nikon played chess in the park, next to him Killer got a page text from Kate “Grand Central Hack The Planet.” They left to go hit Grand Central, but not before Nikon checkmated the rabbi and other man. En route to the station on their rollerblades, the Secret Service agents chased them down, and because they set the traffic override to 9:00 a.m. in that location, it went into effect and caused the streets to be chaotic and multiple vehicle accidents happened that involved the Secret Service car and Agent Gill. The hackers hooked their laptop computers to the payphones at Grand Central Station, and Kate leading the team told them they had to get into the Plague’s file and copy the worm. Kate sent Emmanuel off to fix the phones, and they were happy that Joey was able to make it to help them pull off their hacking. The dozens of Ellingson workers all had their computers hacked and shut down where they were unusable with replacement screens featuring random writing. In the control room, Margo asked Eugene what was going on and he replied it was a minor glitch. Eugene sat down to the main computer and on the screen was “I want a cookie. Give me a cookie, NOW!” from Cookie Monster. Another employee said there was a new virus in the database and it replicated and ate up memory showing Cookie Monster eating all the cookies. Eugene told the employee to type “cookie,” and called him an idiot for not knowing that and added he would head them off at the pass. However, a zero bug then attacked all the login and overlay files and Eugene told the employee to run anti-virus and give him a systems display. They were informed that they lost systems 10 through 40, and Eugene pushed a button and told the dickweeds to die. By doing that, he infected the hackers’ computers with a virus. An employee said the rabbit was in the administration system, and Eugene ordered for them to send a flu shot. It was explained to Margo that a rabbit replicated until it overloaded a file and then it spread like cancer. Kate said the Gibson was finding them too fast, and Dade said there were too many Garbage files and he needed more time. Eugene was then able to pinpoint the location of the hackers and told the Secret Service on the phone that the teens were at Grand Central Station on the lower level and not to screw up their arrests. It was all systems go to the station by Gill and his Feds and domestic police. A payphone rang next to Dade, and when he picked it up The Plague told him the game was over and it was his last chance to get out of it without a prison sentence because he wasn’t good enough to beat Eugene and called him a little sh**. Dade wasn’t about to give it up. Kate got a phone call from Razor and Blade telling her they were onboard. There was also an executive man sitting at his laptop saying they were ready to go along with foreign people all working together to defeat The Plague attack. It was reported at Ellingson that they had massive infection with multiple GPI and FSI viruses coming from remote nodes and they were going for the kernel (the brain and the system command processor) causing brain cancer. An corporate executive came into the control room and asked Eugene Belford what was going on, and he replied in short, Duke, it was a sh** storm. Grand Central Station was then invaded with dozens of Secret Service gunmen causing the crowd to run in fear. Dade found the Garbage file he was looking for and told everyone, and Eugene noticed that and told Dade it was the end for his friend. The Plague shut Dade’s computer down with a massive virus then. The hackers walked over to Joey and told him to drop his virus and go after the worm since he was the closet to it on his computer. Dade said it was root, slash, period, work space, slash, period, garbage, period. Dade had to tell Joey because he was an amateur hacker to teach him how to hack professionally. The Feds made their way through the station and as they came around the corner with Gill in the lead pulling their guns at the payphone expecting people to be there, all they saw were the dangling phones with an out of service sign because the hackers were at a different location. The teens were able to copy the garbage file completely and Kate told Razor and Blade to kill the Gibson and they said roger that. Like a bad video game, Eugene shouted at the screen like a madman after The Plague was defeated by the younger teens’ worldwide, universal mastermind hacker team. It was reported that the tankers stopped capsizing and the ballast tanks were emptying and they should be okay. On the corporation’s control room screen was “Arf! Arf! We Gotcha…Mess with the best, die like the rest,” for The Plague and Co. to see. Just as the hackers were about to leave the terminal, the Secret Service found them and pointed guns at them. As they were handcuffed and walked by the trash, one teen threw the floppy disk into the trashcan at the Grand Central station. Dade screamed outside as he was being arrested and taken to the car that the Feds were trashing their rights and the flow of data and screamed for the onlookers to hack the planet. Emmanuel responded in the crowd with hack the planet and went to the trashcan after the Feds were gone and retrieved the downloaded disk inside the trash. Agent Gill made a call to The Plague and told him they caught the teens red-handed and Ellingson wouldn’t be having any more trouble from them. Eugene and Margo drank champagne to toast their success of stealing millions of dollars and laughed about it. In the interrogation room, Dade tried to say that Kate knew nothing about computers and was just his girlfriend, and Agent Gill told Dade to modify his attitude because he was floating and Gill was about to flush Dade’s a**. They were interrupted when Lauren Murphy arrived so Gill left. Dade told Kate he was trying to help her and she thanked him for it. Dade flipped a switch so he could hear what was being said in another room between his mom and Agent Gill. Agent Gill said Dade was in a bunch of trouble because he violated his probation and engaged in criminal activity and had 30 felony counts. Lauren said her son happened to be a genius and understood things the agent couldn’t comprehend if he lived to be 100 and Dade would never use his knowledge to harm another human being. Another agent arrived to say the news crew arrived and Lauren said she had something to tell them and she faced possible arrest if she did that. Dade couldn’t believe his mom said she didn’t care if she died, she was going to speak up for her son after being threatened by Agent Gill. Gill later gave a press conference about them not seeing the last of the hi-tech espionage because hackers were a grave threat to national security and the incident just proved without a doubt that the Secret Service needed increased funding. In the background, an Obama look-alike agent led Joey and Nikon past the interview site, and then they had TV interference with the Cereal Killer coming on their screen and other screens televised through the city saying hello in Spanish making his first coast to coast, worldwide global television appearance, with the help from Razor and Blade. Joey and Nikon ran to the TV screen to listen, and they started laughing and pointing and Dade and Kate watched too. Emmanuel said he was there to tell them about a heinous scheme hatched from within Ellingson Mineral, but not for world domination but for a virus called da Vinci that if launched would cause Ellingson Mineral tankers to capsize. The virus would be blamed on innocent hackers and the virus was really the smoke screen to cover the tracks of the worm program that would steal $25 million. The password to launch the worm belonged to Margo Wallace, head of public relations for Ellingson Minerals, and Eugene Belford, the computer security officer. Margo and Eugene watched this from Eugene’s bed and freaked out. Agent Gill swore at the screen, and then Emmanuel put the account number of the unnamed account in the Bahamas that held the stolen $25 million. Emmanuel then said he kind of felt like God as he sat in Razor and Blade’s production room supervising the on air event. Eugene didn’t stay around to talk to Margo and had already fled the bed to make his solo getaway without his lover. The teens celebrated in the Secret Service building, and then Margo was arrested and told the police that she didn’t know how to work a VCR, let alone a computer so she was protesting her arrest. As Margo was being brought down the cell block, she said she wanted to make a deal to get her out of her predicament by telling the officers she knew where Eugene’s mother was and she called for an attorney. Eugene, in disguise as Mr. Babbage, was on a flight to Tokyo, Japan, and it would be about 14 hours until they landed. When Eugene asked the flight attendant for a pillow and he reached up to adjust it behind his head, Agent Gill was on the plane and handcuffed The Plague on the spot. Eugene threw a fit and said he would never fly that airline again. Meanwhile in the park in the dark, Dade and Kate were on a date with her wearing a dress. She said he would have looked better in a dress. Next, the two went for a rooftop swim in the pool with their clothes on. Kate couldn’t believe the hacker team decided that Dade won, and he replied that they didn’t feel that way but decided to make Dade the victor because they felt it was the only way he would get a date. Dade called Kate a pretty good and elite hacker. For the grand finale, Dade hacked lights on three NY skyscraper glass tower buildings with the words “Crash and Burn,” and they laughed about it. They discussed their weird dreams and made out passionately in the water with Kate’s dress up on the screen showing her panties and stockings. The movie ended with the two taking their clothes off (down to Kate’s bra) underneath the surface of a New York rooftop city pool. The following was listed on the movie cover art and inside the pamphlet: Randall Blaum, KATU-TV (ABC), Portland, Oregon, “Sit down, shut up and hang on! Hackers is a roller-coaster ride of fun and excitement!” / American Urban Radio Network, “…an extraordinary, stunning spectacle – a must-see of stupendous thrills...an experience you will never forget!” / Roger Ebert, “…smart and entertaining, well-directed, written and acted.” / Hollywood Drama-Logue, “…appealing young cast and snazzy visual style.” / Time Out, “…tense and exciting and brilliantly captures the energy and insolence of virtual teen rebellion.” / Village Voice, “…techno savvy with lots of attitude, amusing dialogue, winning performances and an abundance of computer animation providing an imaginative landscape.” / The Chicago Reader, “…an engaging and lively exploitation fantasy-thriller.”