Computers are not inherently visual by nature, so making them the subject of a movie is invariably a challenging task: directors are caught between the uncinematic and the unconvincing. Takedown, which tells the truish story of hacker Kevin Mitnick, does a reasonable job of straddling this line, primarily by making the characters the focus of the film, rather than what they're actually doing electronically. We are told just enough of how things work to get on with the story and otherwise wisely dispense with the technical details.

Unfortunately, the characters are not interesting, and the film really doesn't have anything to say. There is nothing dramatically attractive about a smart aleck kid with naive ideals, however technically gifted he is. Nor can the movie find anything interesting about the other characters, which might have been carved from wood except that they move and talk. Very little in Takedown is outright bad, but there's less that's good. Why waste the time?