The Plot. This is a true story about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. The story goes about how the site was created and revolves around two lawsuits, one against the twin brothers who had the original idea of such a site, on which Zuckerberg based Facebook and the other against his original business partner and CFO of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin. As the story develops following the two lawsuits at the same time, the story of Zuckerberg and Facebook unfolds.
General thoughts. This movie makes Zuckerberg look like a naive child working with evil grown-ups who use him for their own gain. It felt like Zuckerberg was suddenly thrown into the real world and didn't know how to cope with all the complicated business and relationships. This is a sad story about why you shouldn't do business with your friends.
The thing that makes this movie somewhat interesting is the way it was written. The plot is divided into two parts, each a law-suit in the present, while the descriptive sub-plot is the same for both of them and the actual plot runs in the background of these two lawsuits.
Being a Facebook addict myself it is really interesting to see the history and the evolution of it. While I'm also somewhat involved in the software industry I liked how they didn't over-simplify the programming part, leaving it pretty much what it really is - a lot of boring-looking text that can do wonders when used in a correct combination. Some movies tend to make programmers and hackers more interesting by either having the heroes type really fast and do really cool stuff with just a few lines of code or make the whole process look pretty and graphical, when in reality it's not as adventurous. It was nice that they tried to make the hacking part at the beginning realistic. What Zuckerberg explained as 'hacking' really is not too difficult to accomplish, given that the information is not protected properly.
Also, as somewhat of a surprise, Justin Timberlake had a major role in this movie, playing Sean Parker, the founder of Napster. While I'm not a fan of the man, I think he handled himself quite nicely. An unlikable slick character sortof suits him.
I'd recommend this movie to anyone who is interested in the people behind Facebook. Otherwise, it's an okay movie, but nothing spectacular. And yes, I will post this on Facebook.
6/10 Flogs
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