(Movie) Anti-trust directed by Peter Howitt

The movie started well.

Ryan Phillips (Milo) is a software programmer who along with his very geeky friends dream of doing something on their own – being young and idealistic, they believe in everything open-source and a belief that knowledge is for all humankind and should of course be free

All that changes when Milo is given a personal offer by a CEO of a company which for all practical reasons is Microsoft by another name. Tim Robbins as Gary Winston not only looks eerily like Bill Gates but also walks and talks like him and pretty much espouses the similar principles. Milo sees dollar signs all over the sky and chooses the practical route to life.

This is about 15 mins of the movie…

As I said, the movie started well. Which is about 15 mins…

The next hour and a half or so of the movie descends into  an almost half-baked thriller, when Milo realizes that Gary has a secret side to him, which includes stealing data by acting as eye in the sky and even acting as a mafia boss in ordering executions. Finally Milo wins the battle by making a video (which by the way was really terrible) and making it public and making Gary’s most expensive investment open-source.

The movie’s foundation is different – being technical, so the hero is more of the brainy hero rather than the brawny hero. But at the end of it, the movie makes a complete hash of it. The plot, the premise, the strategies, the final coup all seem semi-finished. The story seems to grip and then slips away the very next instant….

And the thinly veiled attack on Microsoft and its market policies makes it worse because it seems at times like the mouthpiece of the open-source movement, which, in my opinion is given a disservice by the makers of this movie…

A movie that can be seen if you have absolutely nothing else to do…

Labels: conspiracy, Crime, movies, science, thriller

posted by Protik Basu @ 2:12 AM