Ameaça Virtual

This movie is interesting on a surface level. It has lots of action and suspense to engage even passive viewers. Antitrust contains lots of ideas that are specific to the software industry however. The most significant theme of this movie is not one that seeks to implicate major corporations in illegal activities; it is instead one that blatantly discusses the idea of open source code sharing. For those of you who do not know what this is, it is the free sharing of computer programing code. This movie is designed to entertain though. It makes corporate software companies look like organized crime rings. This is simply Hollywood's appeal to its audiences.This is a good movie for all audiences; however a Linux user would particularly enjoy it.

I didn't expect much from AntiTrust, but I was surprised. The story was fast-paced and exciting, it never really slowed-down. When the movie was over I felt satisfied, it had a lot of what I look for in a movie. It requires you to think about what is happening, even if sometimes it gets un-realistic with plot twists. Good things aside, AntiTrust had its share of problems. There was some techy-talk that went on too long, whenever something bad was discovered by Milo(Ryan however you spell his last name) the camera would zoom in and then shake around, and it got a little un-realistic in the finale. All-in-all AntiTrust was good, but I just found-out it opened it 12th place. It deserves better.

I saw this movie not expecting much. While I'm not disappointed in the movie, I felt that more could have been explored in the themes of the movie. Where is the line between self-interest and greed? What creates innovation? What stifles it? What are the consequences of uncontrolled self-interest?

I also found problems with some of the little details (having known lots of computer people, I get picky). For example, all of the code shown is simple html; wouldn't they have used other computer languages? Also, I know the Vancouver area quite well (where Antitrust was filmed) and sometimes, it got too obvious. (See below)

Additionally, some of the other characters' backgrounds could have been developed further.

Yet, the sets were impressive! The interiors did convey the appropriate atmosphere. The use of the Chan Centre at the University of British Columbia- good choice! However, the NURV campus was much too obviously the Burnaby campus of Simon Fraser University. (The aerial shots gave it away).

Still, it was a decent movie, all things considered.

For once, a movie about computers where computers look real. The display on the monitors isn't just some 3D animation that seems to serve no purpose. You can recognize interfaces, or at least can imagine that on a real computer monitor. The code on screen looks real (it's either C++ or Java or some kind of C derivative), even though it probably doesn't do what they pretend it does; they don't show it long enough to figure out what it's suppose to do anyway.

Just some things I noticed: All IPs are 10.x.x.x, which is a range reserved for local networks, it should not be accessible remotely, thus would not be usable for a global system such as Synapse. But that is probably done on purpose, just like they do for phone numbers in the movies, all starting in 555-XXXX.

The networks seem to be freaking fast. In particular, for the data transmitted through the satellites with just about zero latency.

The CD burner is quite fast, it can burn a CD in just 20 seconds.

The server which Synapse is being distributed from seems to be very effective, taking millions of hits within hours. In particular, considering that they have never seen that many hits.

Beside the technical details presented, good movie, good action, good plot twists.

I really enjoyed this film--it was exciting as well as thought-provoking. If you enjoyed "The Net" and "The Firm" you'll probably enjoy a hybrid of the two, although I found "Antitrust" to be more satisfying than either of those. Tim Robbins as always was terrific as the "Bill Gates" character and Ryan Phillippe was excellent as his genius protege. "Antitrust" was a great, entertaining way to spend an afternoon at the movies.