Antitrust

Plot

A computer programmer's dream job at a hot Portland-based firm turns nightmarish when he discovers his boss has a secret and ruthless means of dispatching anti-trust problems.

Release Year: 2001

Rating: 6.0/10 (18,705 voted)

Critic's Score: 31/100

Director:
Peter Howitt

Stars: Ryan Phillippe, Tim Robbins, Rachael Leigh Cook

Storyline
This movie is the fictional story of computer programming genius Milo Hoffman after graduating from Stanford and getting out into the competitive world of computer software. In his contemplation of where to begin his career, he is contacted by Gary Winston whose character is loosely based on Bill Gates. Winston is the CEO of a company called NURV, and they are on the brink of completing the global communication's system, Synapse. They need Hoffman to help them meet their launch date, so after much thought and with the full support of his girlfriend Alice, he accepts the job. Tragedy soon after strikes and Milo becomes suspicious of the company he has been wrapped up in. He learns that trusting anyone could be a mistake, and that nothing is as it seems.

Cast:

Ryan Phillippe
–

Milo Hoffman

Rachael Leigh Cook
–

Lisa Calighan

Claire Forlani
–

Alice Poulson

Tim Robbins
–

Gary Winston

Douglas McFerran
–

Bob Shrot

Richard Roundtree
–

Lyle Barton

Tygh Runyan
–

Larry Banks

Yee Jee Tso
–

Teddy Chin

Nate Dushku
–

Brian Bissel

Ned Bellamy
–

Phil Grimes

Tyler Labine
–

Redmond

Scott Bellis
–

Randy

David Lovgren
–

Danny

Zahf Paroo
–

Desi

(as Zahf Hajee)

Jonathon Young
–

Stinky

Taglines:
Who's watching you?

Details

Official Website:
MGM |

Release Date: 12 January 2001

Filming Locations: Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Box Office Details

Budget: $30,000,000

(estimated)

Opening Weekend: $5,486,209
(USA)
(14 January 2001)
(2433 Screens)

Gross: $17,833,000
(Worldwide)
(2001)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

109 min

Did You Know?

Trivia:

President of NURV Gary Winston appears to be an amalgam of the CEOs of Microsoft and Apple: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, respectively. NURV resembles Microsoft in power and composition, and Winston's appearance is modeled after Gates. But Gary Winston also posesses Steve Jobs' cutthroat business drive, fiery temper, and motivational speeches. This combination is also possibly supported by the coexistence of both PCs and Apple computers on the NURV compound

Goofs:

Incorrectly regarded as goofs:
Although clearly set in Portland, Oregon, Milo and Lisa are shown pumping their own gas, which is against the law in Oregon. However, since they aren't yet on the run, they might be across the river in Vancouver, Washington.

Quotes:

Gary Winston:
Are we making CHEMICAL WEAPONS? KIDDIE PORN? Are we STRIP-MINING? NO! Why are they after me?

User Review

About as unrealistic and irrelevant as "All the President's Men".

Rating: 9/10

OK, make no mistake, this movie was made to convey a message. If criticised
in terms of, say, similarity to "the Firm", or "yet another cyber
thriller",
then you really missed the point. The message is pretty blunt, and
guaranteed to anger a certain large corporation. (This is not an
anti-corporate movie, it is anti- a ~particular~ corporation, and if you
can't guess which one, maybe you should go back to exploring the Kalahari
or
whatever you've been doing for the last ten years.) This corporation has
been known to spend extraordinary resources on PR (including, for example,
bribing journalists and college professors), so almost certainly some of
the
comments on this message board will be produced by that corporation and
should be read in that light.

Second, while murder is a bit over the top, pretty well all the other
crimes
committed by the large corporation in this movie are things of which the
real corporation has been seriously accused, been found to be planning, or
in some cases, convicted; yet in every case managing to escape with fines
or
compensation payments much smaller than the profits they made from the
crime. That is why we hate them so much, and why this movie was made. It's
also obvious why the motif of murder was added: some of the technical
details of why their actions are pure evil are difficult for a non-techie
to
understand, so to make the movie accessible to a wider audience, they added
a more blatant crime (plus pyrotechnic special effects, a tense chase
scene,
love interest, etc).

Thirdly, it is not a futuristic movie, it is present day; nothing in this
movie is more than about 1 or 2 years in the future, at most, and most of
it
is happening now or happened several years ago.

Fourthly, technical realism: while some of the tech stuff is rubbish (hey,
it's a movie!), the effort put into realism is dramatically good compared
to
information technology in any other movie I have ever seen. When we see
IP's, they are actual IPs, but martian (I guess they don't want geeks going
home and whois-ing them!), the code is all real code: some HTML, some C++,
real scripting, but mostly VB (a language the certain large corporation is
known to use a lot). The algorithms they discuss improving are even
algorithms the product would really require! Not only that, the product is
frighteningly similar to the large corporation's actual current development
path!

So, if you walked away from this movie thinking "just for geeks" or
"totally
unrealistic", you need to give yourself a good hard slap, wake up and see
what is really going on in the world around you. This movie was about as
unrealistic and irrelevant as "All the President's Men".

Oh, by the way, I better say that all the above comments are only my
personal opinions, in case they try to sue me, because they do do stuff
like
that.