I’ve only seen bits and pieces of The Italian Job (2003), but from what I can remember, the movie-hacker is called “Napster” because he claims he was the original creator of Napster . Not only is this a dumb movie-lie, but it also will forever date this film to the early 2000’s. Do the kids these days even know what Napster was?
Things that are unlikely:
- It is unlikely every (or any) traffic camera in the city will be accessible. See common hacker trope: Everything is Online.
- It is unlikely that, given that a traffic camera is accessible, there will be an Enhance Button
- It is unlikely that the Enhance Button will be able to do anything quickly on a dinky little Dell laptop.
- It is unlikely that, if you are causing a potential series of vehicular manslaughter charges, you will be doing it in a public mass transit terminal. The guy with the big computer cart, salivating near the baggage claim? Yeah that’s not suspicious at all in a post-9/11 world.
My favorite part of this clip? The ominous:
It’s not a crash…
At 3:27
“You’ll never shut down the real Napster.” Unless, of course, you are Metallica.
Update, Feb 9, 2010: It looks like there was a takedown notice on this clip by Paramount, but you can put The Italian Job on your Netflix queue…or not. I wouldn’t recommend it.
