SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

jee-devraj I saw this movie because it featured in some most-watchable movies list, and having seen it, I don't trust the list so much. It is one of your run-of-the-mill thriller belonging to the days when computer geeks were still a revered, and rare, species. Ryan Phillippe plays Milo Hoffman, a stereotypical computer geek, who originally wants to make a software, open-source and all, with his best buddy Teddy Chin (Yee Jee Tso), both of them being among "the top 20 programmers in the world" (how convenient!). But then comes Bill Gates' doppelganger Ryan Winston, offering them the benefits and perks of coming to work in N.U.R.V., the monopolistic giant of the computers industry (wink wink Microsoft!). Milo takes it, Teddy doesn't. Teddy dies. Between the name of the movie and the sequencing of the scenes, you can see the 'twist' coming from a mile away. But what really does this movie in is its portrayal of computer geeks, playing on every stereotype you can think of; they live and work in their garages (why they were doing it while the house was clearly theirs, beats me), they have no social life ("you have a girlfriend? Thats rare around here"), coding and generating algorithms being basically two guys prancing around the computer, hitting the keys with hand movements that would put the Jedi to shame, and yes, one of them HAS to be Asian. This apart from the obvious hate that the writers had for Microsoft; there is no way you can look at Ryan Winston and not be reminded of Bill Gates, and of course the computer that finally beats the system HAD to be a Macintosh. My advice, stay the hell away from this one and random internet lists.

filmsarmy I don't write reviews. In fact this is my first for many years and I don't know if it classifies as a review of the film itself but rather a critique of the incompetence and lack of thought that went into the making of this film.I feel compelled to warn anyone against watching this film if they value the time they have on this planet. Fortunately, after 20 minutes or so I turned off. If I hadn't I might have thrown something at the TV screen in disgust.The plot is naïve, unworldly and the scripting and dialogue has to be seen to be believed. How Tim Robbins got caught up in this I don't know.Even more surprising is that I see it won some awards. A "golden goblet". I think a wooden spoon would be appropriate.I won't say any more except that you should give this a VERY wide berth. How it sits there with a 6 star rating at the time of writing is beyond me.

leplatypus This is a failed techno-thriller because the techno part is dumb while the thriller is better.Now that computers have become ordinary things, the simplistic "wargames" can't be repeated and the hacking has become more daunting. But the movie can't explain what it's about: what's Nurv? Why is-it so powerful? What does it achieve? At the end, I still don't know so I can't relate to the movie: I see people working, thinking but I don't understand anything.On the other hand, the thriller is well done with the character becoming more and more paranoiac.Thus, I help this movie with a little "4" vote instead of an awful "1" just because of the turn of events and the good cast (even thought a decade later, no one has made a big name!).

johnslegers I think the target audience for this film is too small. Hardcore programmers will dislike this film because the code they used was pretty much bullc*** code and because the way this company doesn't really resemble the atmosphere in a real IT company (I know from experience). Also, the entire plot was way too far-fetched to really come off as realistic at any time.People not into IT are not likely to enjoy this film either, since there's too much techno-babble for anyone not familiar with IT to get some insight in what's going on half of the time. When they speak of an IP address, an interface, an OS or decompressing the audience is expected to understand all of these terms to have an idea of what's happening.So what's left as a possible target audience is a group of geeky kids and teenagers who're into computers enough to understand all the techno-babble but who are too naive and inexperienced to have any idea what working in an IT company feels like.... Not a good move, I'd say.Overall the movie does make a decent effort to keep some tension alive, but the far-fetched plot, the silly situation, the more than average amount of techno-babble and the bullc*** code seriously limit the possible target audience for this film.