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.

Five Minutes to Live — aka Door-to-Door Maniac — stars singer Johnny Cash as Johnny Cabot, a two-bit crook who was framed when his partner dropped the dime on him during a warehouse job on the Jersey waterfront. After mowing down two coppers, Johnny bides time in a motel 2,000 miles away, waiting for the heat to subside.

Restless, he gets an offer from goodfella Fred Dorella, who’s got a score that’ll quench Johnny’s thirst for the juice. Dorella plans to walk right into the bank and ask for a $70,000 withdrawal from exec Mr. Wilson, while Johnny holds Mrs. Wilson for ransom at home. Progress will be updated in five-minute intervals via phone, but if Dorella doesn’t dial, Johnny is to ice her.

For a film released in ’61 starring legendary guitar slinger Cash, Five Minutes is edgy and hyperviolent. Cash is surprisingly convincing as the skittish menace. With his personal history, maybe some of that manic energy is pure method, with him howling the methamphetamine blues.

The script tries to add some nuance with a subplot involving Mr. Wilson having a fling. The marital unrest allows for a brief moment where the audience is led to question if the bank exec/hubby will play nice with the robbers’ demands. Unfortunately, all of that gets cancelled like a bad check by a bait-and-switch climax involving the couple’s kid and a sanitized (and outlandish) Hollywood ending, tacked on to realign the studio’s moral compass. Moviegoers know it’s okay to shoot someone … just to watch them die. —Joshua Jabcuga

Buy it at Amazon.