Howard Franklin's script has enough twists and surprises to keep us from dozing into our popcorn.
Antitrust (2001)
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Reviews Counted:102
Fresh:25
Rotten:77
Average Rating:4/10
Consensus: Due to its use of cliched and ludicrous plot devices, this thriller is more predictable than suspenseful. Also, the acting is bad.
Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Stanford grad Milo Hoffman (Ryan Phillippe) and his equally talented friend, Teddy (Yee Jee Tso), intend to form an Internet start-up and take the world by storm. That all changes when Milo is... Stanford grad Milo Hoffman (Ryan Phillippe) and his equally talented friend, Teddy (Yee Jee Tso), intend to form an Internet start-up and take the world by storm. That all changes when Milo is courted by deceptively friendly software magnate Gary Winston (Tim Robbins), the immensely wealthy head of world-dominating, Portland-based company, NURV. Milo takes the bait, leaving Teddy behind. Arriving in Portland to a NURV-provided house and car, with his girlfriend (Claire Forlani) in tow, Milo finds himself working on Winston's masterplan--software that will link the world's communications devices together. But it's not long before Milo begins to uncover disturbing evidence of Winston's unethical--and brutal--business tactics. When Winston's web of violence touches Milo's world, he joins forces with fellow NURV programmer, Lisa (Rachael Leigh Cook), and sets out to tell the world of Winston's reprehensible practices. Though obviously influenced by the practices of a certain Pacific Northwest-based software empire and its recognizable leader, Howard Franklin's (THE NAME OF THE ROSE) script is a snappy popcorn-muncher that manages to generate suspense even though it realizes its own excesses. Robbins, as evil geek Gary Winston, is obviously having a good time. ANTITRUST takes the conventions of the conspiracy film and adds a candy-colored millennial sheen. [More]
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Tim Robbins, Rachael Leigh Cook, Claire Forlani
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Tim Robbins, Rachael Leigh Cook, Claire Forlani, Richard Roundtree, Nate Dushku, Yee Jee Tso
Director: Peter Howitt
Director: Peter Howitt
Screenwriter: Howard Franklin
Producer: Nick Wechsler, David A. Nicksay, Keith Addis
Studio: MGM/UA
Reviews for Antitrust
Director Peter Howitt ... doesn't bring any perceptible style to the table.
The music and mood work well with a pretty exciting plot to make for an enjoyable experience.
Like The Net, the last truly silly movie about typing, Antitrust oversimplifies to the point that nothing really makes sense.
Howitt ... doesn't take firm enough control over Howard Franklin's screenplay, and allows the story to career wildly into the territory of absurdity.
A movie which is too stone-dumb serious to realize that it would have played much better as a satire of digital-era corporate paranoia.
Even if you'd never seen a movie before in your life, you could still guess what was going to happen here because of Peter Howitt's all-thumbs directing.
It's actually a surprisingly apt think piece about corporate power vs. open source.
Scripted with a subtlety befitting Tinkertoys, directed in a manner that would shame the small-screen union hacks who rap out Xena: Warrior Princess, and acted with the sleepy glumness of a therapy session.
This suspenseless, microchip-deep thriller bores whenever it's not a laugh riot display of astonishing idiocy.
It's a giggle-fest to watch (and there are a handful of tense moments, to be fair), but there's no getting away from the fact that this film is irreparably infected with weak writing, acting and directing.
Pretty much a standard thriller in which no one is quite who they seem to be.
The film's heavy-handed and wrongheaded depiction of geek culture makes me almost ashamed to count myself as a card-carrying member.
A big techno-dud; a digital age thriller that's as predictable and phony as they come.
It doesn’t measure up to the best of the thriller films, but still provides a fair share of nail-biting moments and nifty double-crosses and twists.
Howitt and Franklin have opted, unwisely, to excise much common sense from their tale.
While Robbins has a good time playing the boyish devil, the rest of the principals transmit on an awfully low baud rate.
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