why do i rate it a 3 . 1 ) because it slow and and pretty boring . there little effort from the production to create any suspense at all . 2 ) because although some of the technical aspect be rather accurate ( the dumpster diving and all the social engineering ) and most of them be truly absurd . spoiler represent the free kevin phrase and at the atm . gim me a break . 3 ) it totally one side . it even write by shimomura . 4 ) pretty common to all hacker movie represent quite shallow . why do not they even bother to depict the hacker spirit a bit more in depth . i truly believe the whole sequence with amanda peet could have be much more useful have they explore mitnick principle and belief and instead of bring up the 1st amendment and how interesting scanning can be . wouldn not recommend it to anyone . if you really want to know the true story and check out the documentary freedom downtime .