Product Description

In a world where unseen enemies can watch your every move, who can you trust? Ryan Phillippe (Cruel Intentions), Rachael Leigh Cook (She's All That), Claire Forlani (Meet Joe Black) and OscarÂ(r) winner* Tim Robbins star in this fast-paced, sizzling thriller that crackles with "genuine intrigue (Entertainment Today), "considerable suspense" and an "ingenious, stunningly cinematic payoff" (Los Angeles Times) you have to see to believe! Young, brilliant computer whiz Milo Hoffman (Phillippe) lands an exciting and lucrative job at the world's largest computer company, NURV. Handpicked by powerful C.E.O. Gary Winston (Robbins) to work on a project that will change the way the world communicates, Milo thinks he's found his dream job. But whenhis best friend, Teddy, is brutally murdered and clues lead to NURV's involvement, Milo becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth. With his cunning and beautiful girlfriend (Forlani) and a sexy programmer (Cook) to help him, Milo races to beat Teddy's murderers at their own cyber game. But as theyclose in on him, he realizes he may be too late to learn the most important code of all: Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer. And know which are which before you're killed. *2003: Supporting Actor, Mystic River

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50666 in DVD
• Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
• Released on: 2001-05-15
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 109 minutes

Amazon.com
The term suspension of disbelief was invented for the idea that Ryan Phillippe could be a computer genius. As Milo, a slacker brainiac recruited by smilingly ominous software giant Gary Winston (Tim Robbins) to help build a global communications system, Phillippe still looks like a million bucks. He is also still doing the clenched, pouty grown-up voice that he always uses to show that he means business in this acting stuff (he's nothing if not earnest), and a pair of designer glasses completes the transformation. He's well matched in Antitrust by Claire Forlani, who, in turn, spends time pursing her lips and squinting her dewy eyes as Milo's troubled girlfriend, an artist who proves to be a liability when Milo discovers that Winston is killing off clever competitors like a dot-com führer. Robbins, looking like David Letterman, seems willing to either take his role dead seriously or goof around a bit, but director Peter Howitt doesn't know how to play any of it (the actor was better used as a grinning madman in another flawed paranoid thriller, the underseen Arlington Road). Without any underlying menace or enough satirical bite to keep it interesting, the whole thing slips by passively in a mindless matinee kind of way until the over-the-top finale. Production designer Catherine Hardwicke has had some big, glossy fun creating Winston's campus and ornate private kingdom, and there's the cheapest of kicks in seeing Robbins's Bill Gates taken down publicly, but the film is definitely junior league. --Steve Wiecking

Customer Reviews

I Know what Tim Robbins Did Last Summer
Ryan Phillippe acquits himself credibly as genius geek who gets his big break working for a Bill Gates wannabe, played by Tim Robbins. The biggest problem, going in, is open source versus commercialism. As the flick begins, Milo's (Phillippe's character) biggest dillemma is sorting out open-source Anarchism from Capitalist wage-slave (albeit elite) seduction.

While Milo makes the "wrong" choice, it propels him into the storyline of this movie. Slowly we see that Robbins would put a James Bond villain to shame. Eventually, Milo figures that out, too. Don't worry about being too slow to pick up what's going on, the major plot is spelled out so that even the most clueless jock can keep track.

Some interesting cinematic devices are used (notice the digital art during a climactic sequence) and the actors compel us to take part in the story. Plenty of clues forshadow important plot elements, so viewers may feel smarter than they really are as they predict what will happen next. For the real propellor heads, actual HTML & BASH codes are used. Massive Attack's "Angel" fits perfectly into a key dramatic moment.

How much longer can Tim Robbins go on playing charismatic psychopaths without getting typecast?

Four stars for plot, four stars for revealing the plot, four stars for acting. Overall, a great Friday night entertainment flick. Won't win any awards, but who cares? It's fun.

reeks...
Wow. If you're over thirty years old and possess an I.Q. greater than a potato you will abhor this assault to your intellect. If you work in the industry you'll find it too painful to watch. If you find films like Hackers, The Net, or the remake of Charlie's Angles too embarrassing to admit to having watched - you might consider skipping this one.

The production is clean. The acting is quite good. The direction is fine. The soundtrack works. However, the moronic premise is less intellectually satisfying than any episode of Sponge Bob Square Pants or Dexter's Laboratory (the latter probably having more realistic computer science than the preposterous despotism portrayed in the film.)

The film takes itself far too seriously and tries to deliver a dramatic message by oversimplifying and vilifying the complexities of the computer industry. This is an appalling disinformation campaign that delivers almost no suspension of disbelief.

This sensualization of insipid technical minutiae propped up with the old delusions of persecution plot is, in my humble opinion, a waste of everybody's time.

If you're looking for just entertainment - Swordfish is a fun film.

I suppose this will appeal to the "script kiddies"

Good hacking scenes, everything else bad
The one good thing about this movie is that this is the first movie I've ever seen that uses _real_ computer commands for hacking. If you watch the commands that the hero uses to hack into the computer, you will find that they are, in fact, real commands that work the way shown.

Other than that, the movie was pretty lame. It could have been a good movie, but it was just a bit unbelieveable and not well thought through. The open-source/closed-source differentiation was bad. As an open-source/free software advocate, I thought that the portrayal of the reasons for open-source and the philosophy were very poorly portrayed.

I enjoyed seeing it for the hacking scenes, and to get to see a few of my favorite programmers on film in cameo shots. It's also somewhat historic, as being the first mainstream film about monopoly power and open-source, even though it treated both subjects poorly (a real movie about the problems of monopolies would be great, but this wasn't it). So, watch it for those reasons, because there isn't much else there.