"Wardriver" Review

Wardriver is the new Paramount+ original streaming movie. It is quite terrible and bad and boring and stupid and you shouldn't watch it. Why? Well, I guess I should say something to justify this, not that it matters.

A rough-looking Dane DeHaan (Chronicle) plays Cole, a wardriver, which is someone who goes around looking for open internet access points, in this case so he can steal company payroll using a magic computer program which just hacks things instantly. He is laundering his proceeds through the Dark Web, dealing with an anonymous user named "RTOMMASI" (half-point for the L.A. Confidential reference) who sends Cole's cut back in the form of cash cards. To show that Cole isn't a really bad guy, he tosses a card in the mailbox of the single mother across the street. Awwwww.

One day he gets beat up by Oscar (Mamoudou Athie, Archive 81), the doorman for a restaurant Cole ripped off who shows up at his door and forces himself inside. He says that a young woman who comes to the place with her father mentioned she had over $800,000 in her checking account and he wants Cole to steal it all or else he'll rat him out for the restaurant payroll theft.

Cole does as he's told because he's a little bitch, but then starts looking into his target and finds that Sarah (Sasha Kelly, Supergirl from The Flash) wasn't coming with her father, but that she was a side piece and that the money belonged to her sugar daddy boyfriend, Bilson (Jeffrey Donovan, Burn Notice), and that he'll hurt her if she doesn't return it. Trying to make good, he proceeds to skim off a bunch of ATM terminals - because ripping off a bunch of random strangers to save some chick you robbed is quite chivalrous - and try to put it back and make right. 

He doesn't get it all, but goes to leave a note with instructions how to access the hundreds of thousands he did nab and she catches him so of course they start cozying up to one another. She then proposes they collaborate with Oscar to engineer a heist at Bilson's house where he has $3M in cash. Meanwhile, his Dark Web pals are starting the threaten to expose him. Commence with a whole bunch of double crossing and scams that you'll see coming from a mile away and then almost everybody ends up dead, so happy ending, I guess.

I should have known it would be terrible because it was written by Daniel Casey, the guy who typed F9: The Fast Saga (aka the second worst Furry Fastness movie, the one with the Fiero in space). He is so much of a hack he can't even bother giving any of the characters any reasonable details to root for. We know nothing about Cole other than he's a hacker, lives alone, vapes constantly, and chews on lollipop sticks. Does he have a family? He doesn't want to talk about it, meaning Casey didn't want to think something up. Why does Cole's Dark Web pals threaten him? What happened to honor among thieves?

The howling stupidity of this flick is captured by a scene where Cole is trying to retrieve a skimmer from an ATM in a gas station convenience store. While he's trying to dislodge it a pair of cops come in for donuts or whatever and he's behaving so hinky that one of the cops begins to pay attention. He gets the skimmer off before the cop walks over and he is able to escape without being stopped which really speaks highly of Utah law enforcement. 

We're supposed to believe this high-tech Robin Hood is an elite hacker (he has a password cracker called Brute Force which decodes passwords within seconds!) who mitigates his crimes by tossing cash cards to the single mom, but does nothing but stupid things which constantly have him under someone else's thumb, but when confronted with the risk of capture can't muster the neurons to, oh I dunno, WALK AWAY FROM THE ATM AND COME BACK LATER WHEN THE COPS ARE GONE!!!!

Unlike the Temu Heat knockoff that was Crime 101 (5/10, review tk), Wardriver's sole purpose is to send up another red flag about hiring Daniel Casey to type your movie, yet it seems he must have kompromat on half of Hollyweird because he's got a LOT of work lined up with people who should know better. Doubly horrifying, he graduated from my high school. Ugh.

Score: 2/10. Skip it.