Pirates of Silicon Valley

This is an engaging historical-fiction look at the development of the famous computer companies Apple and Microsoft. The performances are terrific, but the film suffers from trying to handle several main characters and cover a lot of historical events. It is also unfortunate that there are three main characters all named "Steve."

The story is told from the perspective of Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnik), who is portrayed as a gentle head and caring foil to Noah Wyle's brilliant but cruel portrayal of Steve Jobs, Wozniak's Apple co-founder. Anthony Michael Hall obviously has a wonderful time playing the weaselly Bill Gates.

The title is a pun referencing both the buccaneering style Jobs celebrated at Apple, and the idea of unethically 'pirating' the computer developments of other engineers. The film's main point is that both Apple and Microsoft gained their key functionality, the image-based screen display of a computer system (GUI) and the 'mouse' pointing device, by 'pirating' the ideas. Apple swipes them from Xerox, then Microsoft swipes them from Apple.

This is a personality study and not a technical review, and while that may make it more accessible the film doesn't make it entirely clear why Jobs provides so much access to Gates and his crew (presumably Gates is supposedly modifying his computer language, BASIC, to work on the Apple?)

I'd have to know a lot more about Wozniak, Jobs, and Gates before judging them from this film, which is especially hard on Jobs. Wyle portrays him as a selfish and arrogant adolescent, exploiting and manipulating friends and subordinates. Altogether the film is worth watching, but bittersweet and possibly slanted.

I think this is the best movie about Steve Jobs. I love how Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall captured the characters through their voices. Great!

What you have in Pirates of Silicon Valley is a basic skeletal structure of the formation of Apple Computers and the gigantic Microsoft corporation, but it's not a very detailed account. Sure, it follows the creators from high school age, but the film structure is very blocky and it jumps around a lot.

We get no hint about why the names Apple and Microsoft were chosen (a trivial point, yes, but it would have been a good thing to put in a film about the history of those two companies). Also, late in the film the time gets a little confusing. The year is always noted on the bottom of the screen, but the story jumps sporadically from year to year. When you don't jump ahead in time for a while, you begin to lose track of what year you're in. You think you're looking at the early eighties, but the late 90s model Ford Broncos in the background can be very confusing.

Pirates of Silicon Valley was a fairly informative look at how Apple and Microsoft came to be, and there were some very interesting looks at what the first personal computers looked like, but the film itself is not nearly as informative as it should be. A movie about one of the biggest corporations the world has ever known (and it's president, the wealthiest man on the planet) needs to go into a bit more detail about the subject matter that it is presenting. This film was put together fairly well, but there was just not enough effort and research put into it by the writers and producers.

As a geek in Silicon Valley I enjoyed this movie beyond my expectations. The makers of this movie seemed to agree with its protagonists that the evolution of the personal computer is a process that shaped the history of the world - and they're right. If you're not sitting in front of a Windows box or Mac right now, you're in the vast minority. The story of how Steve Jobs and Bill Gates amassed such wealth and power is an interesting one.

Noah Wyle (Jobs) and Anthony Michael Hall (Gates) fit their characters to a T. Gates was portrayed just as I imagined him - smug, opportunistic and sneaky, but hardly villainous. Surprisingly, during this movie I was more sympathetic to Gates than to the brilliant but unstable Jobs who came across as arrogant and petulant.

All in all, this was quite enjoyable for a tele-movie. If you're inclined towards the geeky yourself, and remember the early days of the PC biz, you'll probably find this movie quite educational.

I recently saw a rough-cut of TNT Originals' Pirates of Silicon Valley. (It airs in June -- premiere's on Sunday June 20.) It's the story of Steve Jobs (Co-founder of Apple Computers) and Bill Gates (Co-founder of Microsoft) and their competitive rivalry to dominate the computer industry. Sounds boring, right? It's not! It's actually pretty cool! Here's why:

Casting Anthony Michael Hall as the world's biggest geek, Bill Gates, was genius. Hall has done such crap in the past few years that we all forgot what a great character actor he is. His best characters have always been misfits and geeks. In Pirates, he captures everything that's both creepy and sympathetic about Bill Gates. He's totally believable!

Noah Wyle's character as Steve Jobs is right on! Here I always thought Apple was the underdog. Turns out -- Apple had it all over Microsoft until the mid-eighties. Wyle plays Jobs as this power-hungry hippie gone awry. It's a nice change from his do-good doctor on ER. And Wyle makes the jump to full-length film effortlessly. Look for him on the big screen battling aliens any day now.

The story is somewhat standard but filled in with cool details that keep it interesting Jobs as a deadbeat Dad; Gates pitching his product to IBM (the IBM guy actually thinks all the money is in the hardware!), and the late-night screaming matches between Jobs and Gates.

Here's the thing that just boggles my mind -- these two are pretty average guys especially for their generation. Sure, they're two of the most powerful men in the world (Gates is the richest man in the world) but you could totally see either one showing up at your bar-b-que in Khakis and an ill-fitting shirt.

Pirates of Silicon Valley is quite entertaining it's weird, it's funny and quirky-- I say check it out!