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Review: ‘Hacker’s Game’ doesn’t quite click

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In “Hacker’s Game,” self-styled Internet activist Soyan (Chris Schellenger) lands a job at BL Reputation Management after he’s caught breaching its IT system and potentially exposing sensitive information about its clients. The company specializes in creating new identities and rewriting histories — much like the witness-protection program except available to any VIPs or corporate entities.

Meanwhile in the Human Search Organization, human-rights lawyer Alice Carson (Gayla Johnson) tasks Loise (Pom Klementieff) with tracking down families of victims of illegal arms trade. Soyan and Loise become romantically involved, while BL partner Russel Belial (King Orba) tries to seduce Alice under the false pretense of a job offer to sideline her.

With passing resemblance to Edward Snowden, Soyan seeks to dump classified corporate, government and banking information on the WikiLeaks-esque Independent Leak. That makes an excellent premise for a cyber-thriller, but the film is hardly worthy of comparison with the Snowden documentary “Citizenfour.”

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Writer-director Cyril Morin can’t muster a coherent screenplay, as most of the tedious expositions and Soyan’s various work assignments are either inconsequential or nonsensical. Worse, the performances are uniformly insipid. Klementieff, who receives top billing, has the acting range of a petulant child. Even if you do manage to make sense of the plot, it still doesn’t make the film any more watchable.

“Hacker’s Game.”

No MPAA rating.

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Playing: At Arena Cinema, Hollywood.

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