The Chinese government reaches out to the FBI to investigate malware that crippled a nuclear reactor in China. "We go head-to-head with the Chinese every day. It won't be a bad idea to work with them for once," the agent responds.

And Michael Mann's latest action thriller, Blackhat, is off to a wild and crazy start.

In the interest of avoiding spoilers, Blackhat in brief: a "blackhat" hacker (we never learn his name) uses a Remote Access Tool to infect a power plant in China with malware. The plant blows up, and MIT-educated Chen Da Wai, a member of China's elite cadre of cyber soldiers, is on the hunt for the bad guys. Chen recruits his sister, a network engineer, and convinces the FBI to get his former roommate, and genius hacker, Nicholas Hathaway, released from prison. The three of them criss-cross the globe trying to track down the criminal mastermind, with the help of a U.S. Marshall and the FBI agent in charge. There are tons of explosions, gunfights, and many people die.

Don't try to make sense out of the plot. In fact, I am still not sure about many things. One thing that is driving me batty: what was the "blackhat" hacker's name? Did I miss it in the middle of all the explosions and gunfire? For a movie that spends so much of its time trying to figure out the motive behind the attacks, the master plan was incomprehensible and frankly, felt like a cop-out. As if the writers used all their best ideas coming up with this convoluted trail of clues…and then realized they had no idea what to do next.

But it's okay, because there are lots of cinematic effects. Like watching flashes of lights traveling across wires, out-of-focus scenes to show brooding Chris Hemsworth as Hathaway trying to out-think the bad guys, and lots of running. Because hackers run, didn't you know?

Surprisingly—or not so surprising, since Kevin Poulson (among others) was a consultant—Black Hat got most of the information security correct. The explanation about RATs and how malware infected the power plant was straightforward and made sense. The discussion of how you can't just rely on IP addresses because attackers jump through multiple proxy servers was clear. Viewers will come away knowing that cybercriminals aren't just kids sitting in the basement—the cyber-crime organization is well-funded and highly structured, with lower-level participants handling tasks like infecting sensitive systems with backdoors and money mules transferring money across accounts.

The types of attacks highlighted in Blackhat are also correct, albeit over-dramatized. The malware that infects and damages the turbines in the Chinese nuclear reactor echoes Stuxnet, the malware that infected and damaged Iranian nuclear facilities in 2009. Damaging the reactor wouldn't be instantaneous, and the nuclear plant wouldn't explode within minutes. But hey, that's the movies for you.

And you can't help but feel sympathetic for that bank official who got duped into letting the pretty and slightly clueless woman (Chen's sister)