Despite Miramax’s best efforts to make you think otherwise (i.e. never releasing it in theaters, waiting five years to dump it on video, giving Skeet Ulrich a lead role), Track Down isn’t as bad as you’d expect.

It’s the true story of Kevin Mitnick, the hacker who evaded the FBI for two years after breaking into computer networks and stealing software and data that could have been highly damaging, had he chosen to do so.

Mitnick is played by Ulrich, who no longer looks like Johnny Depp, but Kevin Federline. As he attempts to live off the grid, he’s chased not only by federal agents, but computer security expert Tsutomu Shimomura (Russell Wong), whose hard drive Mitnick wiped clean and whose super-secret virus-worm-thingie he swiped.

Track Down has an interesting dilemma: How do you make hacking visually exciting? Well, other than having Angelina Jolie strip down in a pool, you can’t. So it has to rely on your standard cat-and-mouse setup to generate any thrills. But in doing so, Track Down forgets to dumb down the technology aspect to make it easily acceptable. It assumes you already know a lot about hacking, from the lingo to the how-to.

I obviously don’t know as much as I should have, because after watching the film, I have no idea what exactly Mitnick did or who Shimomura is. But I do know that Halloween 6 director Joe Chappelle so obviously used this flashy piece as a calling card to get his CSI: Miami gig.

Jeremy Sisto, Master P and Amanda Peet are thrown into the cast just to piss me off. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.