AntiTrust (2001)

In recent years computers - and the Internet in particular - have had an increasing impact on everyday life. They have even manage to infiltrate films - no action movie is now complete without some expensive computer being an integral part of the plot - usually while a sidekick hacks into it absurdly easily for some poorly explained reason. Despite this, there has been a general lack of movies specifically *about* computers, and more particularly a lack of *good* movies about computers. 2001's "Antitrust" aims to correct that problem.

In this movie computer geek Milo Hoffman (Ryan Phillipe) is on the verge of setting up an independent and principled software company with his friend Teddy (Yee Jee Tso) when he is lured away from a life of writing open-source software to work for the world's biggest computer firm and becomes a protogee of it's charasmatic founder Gary Winston (Tim Robbins). The movie's writers would probably insist on denying that Winston is really meant to be Bill Gates but it's blatantly obvious that Robbins' performance is based on the infamous Microsoft chairman.

As you might expect, it turns out that the big corporation Winston is in charge of is Up To No Good and has in fact been stealing code for independent programmers, and permanently dealing with anyone who happens to get close to their dark secrets. At stake is the software program Milo is working on - a program called Synapse which will somehow revolutionise global communications. After Milo starts to get hints of his employer's bad habits he realises he must expose them to the world, but he begins to wonder who he can really trust.

As a thriller, this works adequately. We do get a genuine sense of Milo's growing paranoia and some skillfull direction manages to deliver a fair bit of tension when Milo starts trying to infiltrate the computer systems. However, the action scenes are generally unspectacular and as an action movie it is merely average.

Somewhat surprisingly, despite the amount of technology in the movie there aren't really any glaring pieces of technological inaccuracy. A computing expert might be able to pick holes in some of the more technical moments but it is generally believable, if far fetched. It even managed to touch on issue much discussed in the computing world such as the alleged benefits of open source software.

Away from the computers, the human element of this movie is quite competent as well. Phillipe delivers a convincingly idealistic performance and Robbins delivers a perfect impression of a ruthless but charasmatic business leader and I suspect if Bill Gates was as charasmatic in real life as Winston is then he might have quite a few less enemies. Claire Forlani and Rachel Leigh Cook also deliver sold performances as the main female characters here and the lesser actors also acquite themselves well enough.

In summary, this is a reasonably entertaining thriller, notable mostly for being the first film to succesful base a thriller plot around the world of computing.

Rating : 7 / 10

All content ©2003 William Marnoch.

Comments? Agree/Disagree with the Reviews? Suggestions? Random Ramblings? Whatever you might want to say, feel free to e-mail me at william@wmarnoch.freeserve.co.uk .