Freedom Downtime

One has to wonder, after seeing a documentary such as this, if the ideas in the film were more important than its quality. The thing is every movie is propaganda: if they were artistic expression of creative people they wouldn't all look the same. Most people are not actually paying for truth and they are not paying for art, instead they are only looking for validation of their own concepts and ideas.

That is why I find it difficult to comment on a film like Freedom Downtime. On one hand I totally believe Kevin Mitnick and a lot of hackers to have been mistreated and witch hunted by governments and the American one in particular. On the other hand it is hard to take seriously a documentary that is almost completely one-sided, like Michael Moore's stuff.

The entire premise of the film is that Kevin's friends talk freely to Emmanuel Goldstein, while corporations, government agencies and hostile witnesses and agitators in the Mitnick case refuse to cooperate. But I can't possibly buy that. They accidentally met two friendly lawyers during the making of the film; I am sure they could have made a whole lot more trying to tackle the problem legally and diplomatically. A high profile case like that should have attracted a lot of legal vultures. But instead the makers of the film went out of their way to show how unfair they were treated and thrown out from every place they were trying to get to. So did Moore, if you remember his movies, and they were of the same format: sticking it to people and then complaining they were not taken seriously, then showing only the producer's point of view.

I have read Mitnick's book, which is much more open and moderate, and it had a whole lot much of an effect on me. This film is two hours long and it very rarely actually discloses facts. Probably Wikipedia's page is more informative than this documentary. I had the impression it told more about Bernie S. than about Kevin Mitnick, so clearly something was off. There is an interview with Mitnick bundled with the film, but it is so badly made that I have to ask myself if Goldstein wanted to discredit Kevin. They feed him energizers and then let him blow off steam on record. The poor guy is so enraged and traumatized by his experience that he can barely express himself.

Anyway, to summarize: I really empathize with Mitnick's plight and the point of view of the authors of the film, but I don't think the film was very good. The purpose of such a production is to show a point of view in a way that brings more people to it, in a way that makes people believe the point. People that are in the field and have every reason to already believe what is in the film have no need to see it, while people who don't have very little chance to connect to anything Freedom Downtime has to offer. As such, it failed and was probably more of an ego trip for Goldstein and his crew.

I can't stop fearing, though, that I am having the same reaction the legal system in the US had about Mitnick: if the defense lawyer is not highly skilled and highly paid, probably Kevin is guilty; if the film is low budget and made by amateurs, then its message is probably not good.

The simple truth is that the American justice and prison system are run by private corporation and if the government wants to get rid of someone they just hand them over to this system. This movie is about just one person that this has happened too. Unfortunately for Mitnick he was the scapegoat used to pass a lot of laws to protect corporations and allow them to right off a lot of expenses and steal a lot of money by blaming hackers. This is the real message of the movie. Just a simple wake up call to the people.

This movie is much more then the story of Mitnick, a computer user at a time when very few people knew how to turn them on. He was used and abused, his life destroyed and his freedom taken away. And the scary truth is most people really didn't care because it was happening to someone else.

This is a great movie, funny beyond what you would expect. Informative beyond what it seems, all you have to do is listen to what the "geeks" are saying. It's filled with great REAL characters that will make you laugh out loud.

Watch this movie if you want to have a great time and learn more then you would watching a year of Hollywood movies Great job to the cast and crew and the hackers and the geeks ... I loved it

Freedom Downtime is an eloquent and thought provoking documentary about the disgusting abuse of power in the United States. Kevin Mitnik's life was destroyed by the "justice" system. This film documents the campaign to free him, and provides a fascinating insight into the hacker world. You will laugh, you will cry, you will want to take up arms against the state...

This is an interesting documentary about a subject that is often ignored - the court's and police's lack of knowledge about anything connected to a network, and medias habit of twisting or ignoring facts when they see they can make more money. As a non-American, there are some things that I don't get, but over all the film is very good at telling us how things work, and in my country (Sweden), the events in this film might get another point of view, since the police raid on the pirate bay in April 2006, where many things got eerily similar to what happened to Mitnick.

In a film making point of view Freedom Downtime is lacking though, the editing could be better, and the sound mixing got some flaws (but I must say it was a long time since I saw the film, so I could remember incorrectly). Still, this is a must see for anyone interested in the hacker community, or the odd behaviour of the "justice".

Freedom Downtime is basically a personal video record of the "Free Kevin" campaign to free notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick. It's not really about hacking at all and the comparisons to Michael Moore are only appropriate in that the filmmaker confronts those who have been deemed as bad guys. Other than that, Freedom Downtime shares nothing in common with Michael Moore films and is an interesting, albeit scary, look at the justice system in the USA.

It should be an interesting film for anyone who remembers the "Free Kevin" campaign that was once so prevalent on the internet. It's full of that dry humor so appreciated by hacker culture, which adds a little hacker flavor to an otherwise serious subject. Those not familiar with Mitnick may not appreciate the film as much, but they'll still come away with an inside glimpse into serious problems with the justice system and the corporate media's willingness to ignore the truth when it wishes to do so. Of course, this won't come as a big surprise today, when trust in the corporate media is at an all-time low and people have turned to the internet as a result.