Movie Maundering #4 – Antitrust

Image: Antitrust cover art. Copyright Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In an attempt to bum rush my To-Do List for some last-minute points, I got myself to watch another member of the Computing Science 101 pack, Antitrust. Here’s what I thought of it.

Plot

Milo is a computer programmer who is headhunted by a giant global corporation called NURV (Never Underestimate Radical Vision) and offered a lucrative job opportunity at the firm. Although sad to leave his friends in the small-time project they started together, he takes the position and moves to the company’s headquarters in Oregon.

Work goes very well at first, friendly coworkers, nice job perks, etc. And his job is made easier by his new boss, CEO Gary Winston, seemingly coming up with the missing piece of code out of thin air whenever he hits a roadblock. All is on track for the completion of the company’s next claim to fame, Synapse, a huge social multimedia network set to launch and revolutionize communication the world over.

This all changes when his best friend and former colleague is murdered, and then Winston delivering another piece of ground-breaking programming the following day. Suspicious, Milo begins to investigate, and following the gruesome discovery that NURV is behind the conspiratorial theft, murder, and cover-up of dozens of programmers, he sets out to bring about righteous justice.

Cast

Not bad. Ryan Phillippe plays the lead as Milo, with the oh-so-hot Rachel Leigh Cook backing him up as the hot girl from work/sort of other woman, but not really/traitorous biatch in the end, and Tim Robbins makes a great creepy but charismatic corporate villain. He kinda looks like a cross between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Weskimo’s Take

This movie has a lot of flaws. The soundtrack is pretty good, though its ‘suspense music’ can be pretty oddly placed sometimes. And from several instances of poorly explained story and weak script to the beat-you-about-the-face predictability present throughout, there is a fair bit wrong with this movie.

That being said, I like Antitrust. It’s got that nerdy computer-based storyline that I find appealing, along with a Big Brother type of story progression where Milo discovers just exactly how much of his life is tracked, followed, and manipulated by the evil watchdog enterprise of NURV.

Otherwise, I suppose my only real complaint is how little actually happens in the movie. It sort of seems like it runs you in circles the whole time. I suppose this could be because that is what the movie is about, basically playing for time until the life-altering media network is complete, but it really comes through as simply a lack of significant actions.

All in all, Antitrust is a decent movie. It won’t blow your mind with a big twist ending or anything, and if it does, it will be about half an hour before the writers wanted it to. Worth the watch, but it’s no Hackers.

Scoring