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If you don’t want to know how
easy it is for a canny individual—or a
malicious state actor—to hack into the
electronic voting technology used in the
U.S., don’t watch Kill Chain: The Cyber
War on America’s Elections. In this un
nervingly persuasive HBO documen
tary, directors Simon Ardizzone, Russell
Michaels and Sarah Teale marshal cyber
security experts, statisticians and law
makers to expose cracks in the system
that could easily allow hackers to affect
voting results. The filmmakers’ sources
also include actual hackers, among them
an individual who breached Alaska’s vot
ing system in 2016 just to see if he could.
Although he explains in an oncamera
interview (his face obscured to protect
his identity) that he declined to alter
any data, he says he could have sold his
“backdoor” access for millions.
If that’s not enough to scare anyone
who cares about democracy, there’s
plenty more. One of the central figures
of Kill Chain is election security expert
Harri Hursti, who explains, with clar
ity, just how vulnerable American vot
ing systems are. (Hursti also appeared
in the 2006 documentary Hacking
Democracy, from the same team of film
makers.) Although voting machines areREVIEW
Democracy hangs by a few lines of codesupposed to be kept in secure facilities,
Hursti found a widely used model for
sale—on eBay. The vendor had hun
dreds of them, and he was selling them
for around $79 each. Hursti bought a
few, using them to explain how easily
their workings could be examined and
breached. He also brought a selection
of voting machines to Def Con, a three
day conference for hackers, and invited
attendees to go at them; one expert
quickly figured out how to shut down a
machine remotely from a laptop. “If you
don’t believe there’s this kind of room
in Russia running 24/7,” Hursti notes,
“you’re kidding yourself.”
The U.S. voting system is, as several
interviewees in Kill Chain put it, a bi
partisan concern; still, as the documen
tary notes, Senate majority leader Mitch
McConnell has blocked votes on the
Secure Elections Act and four similar
bipartisan bills. What’s more, the three
companies that provide voting systems
to the U.S. declined to be interviewed for
Kill Chain; the assumption is that their
products are failsafe. If nothing else, Kill
Chain demands that we ask whom we’re
trusting, and why. —S.Z.KILL CHAIN debuts March 26 on HBOREVIEW
Sweet and earthy,
with a crisp finishParent-child conflicts are eter-
nal, and Uncorked— written and
directed by Prentice Penny—
tells a simple and familiar
story: young wine enthusiast
Elijah (the breezily charming
Mamoudou Athie) disappoints
his father (Courtney B. Vance,
always a pleasure to watch)
when he opts to chase his
ambition of becoming a master
sommelier, rather than take
over the family’s Memphis
barbecue business. Elijah’s
mother (played, vivaciously, by
Niecy Nash) is more supportive,
but even she can do only so
much to protect Elijah’s dream.
You’ve seen this sort of
thing before, but you’ve never
seen this particular family
before, and their freewheeling
banter gives Uncorked its airy,
bubbly energy. It doesn’t hurt
that Uncorked is easy on the
eyes, and on jangled nerves:
it’s set partly in Paris—Elijah
travels there for his studies—
and the city looks exactly
as fancy and sparkly as it
should. In some ways, though,
the story’s Memphis setting
is more vivid. Its churches,
its doughnut shops, its
neighborhood joints capture a
sense of the city’s day-to-day
life, a place where dreams
deferred can turn, overnight,
into dreams pursued—as
long as you give yourself room
to breathe. —S.Z.UNCORKED streams
CRIP CAMP: STEVE HONIGSBAUM; KILL CHAIN: HBO; UNCORKED: NINA ROBINSONHacking expert Hursti shows how easy it is to breach vulnerable voting systems March 27 on NetflixNash and Athie: bottled dreamsTMOVIES.indd 95 3/24/20 4:53 PM