Long-time Linux users are familiar with Antitrust (2001), which was strongly advertised as a movie that would inform the masses about open source and Linux. I'll leave that discussion to archived forums and avoid the open source and Linux politics that came with this movie. Suffice to say, I enjoyed this movie when I watched it in the cinema way back in 2001 and I highly recommend open-minded cinephiles to give it a shot - Linux background optional but recommended. Wikipedia and IMDB both provide excellent summaries of this flick along with a brilliant list of Linux-related trivia so I won't retread that path (click on the links if you want some juicy details about ex-Gnome developer Miguel de Icaza's cameo).
The film, which was actually made in 2000 and released in 2001, features two very attractive young actresses, both of whom have gained a career resurgence of late. A young Claire Forlani before she was defiled by Death in the form of Brad Pitt (Meet Joe Black - 1998) and a shriveled Gary Sinise (C.S.I. New York) is the geek hero's girlfriend at the onset of the movie (if you could believe that!). Cutie Rachel Leigh Cook, whose hypnotizing doe-eyed stares can melt any icy-cold binary programmer's heart in a second, appears here as the geek hero's attractive co-worker. Claire Forlani (who appeared in 2011's TV series Camelot) and Rachel Leigh Cook (who is currently co-starring in TV's Perception) both seem oddly appropriately cast in the movie since they seemed spaced out half the time while all the "techie" stuff happens. This is perfectly fine since baby-faced Ryan Phillippe (the main protagonist) and low-key Tim Robbins (the main antagonist) both downplay their performance. After all, it's hard to get excited about code, right? Still, the movie does get pretty exciting towards the end even if you had no idea what Java instructions Phillippe is compiling during the climax. Antitrust even gets pretty hot if you watch the version with the deleted scenes (the lucky dog Phillippe gets to have romantic sex with innocent Cook and rough sex with scheming girlfriend Forlani).
Gasp! Someone's using a landline phone! (Hey, you're looking in the wrong area. This is not that kind of blog.)
Sigh. If only my computer lab partner looked like her . . .
Admittedly, Antitrust hasn't aged well from a plot standpoint. In fact, the idea of killing people for their code seems somewhat silly since you can do all of that a thousand miles away from your victim without leaving your seat at Starbucks and while listening to Sting and downloading a torrent of Downton Abbey. Moreover, villifying Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, which the movie does in the form of Tim Robbins, seems out of fashion considering that Bill Gates no longer heads Microsoft and is a respected philanthropist while Steve Jobs is venerated by millions of people around the world. In fact, some people will punch you in the face if you even say Jobs had a bad haircut (that's the Apple cult for you). The conspiracy of paying off people to stalk and influence genius programmers (which the lovely Claire Forlani does in good measure) seems a bit over the top. Antitrust did win some awards despite head-scratching fake scares like the homeless man that pops into Philippe's car. Another head-scratcher is the 3-minute screen time of Richard Roundtree - the actor who played the classic detective Shaft in the movies (Linux should have a Shaft theme song). Worst still, the filmmakers reserve the most frightening music when they zoom in to a plastic computer mouse outside a building (which the movie hinted 15 minutes in as the source of the company NURV's malevolent monitoring). The music gets even more creepy when Phillippe sneaks into the daycare center and accesses the cleverly hidden back up servers. I hate to admit it but the sight of programmers being monitored through a daycare center seems more insulting than horrifying.
Being watched by staff and the kids at the daycare is absolutely terrifying.
Beware of the mouse outside the daycare . . . it could be disguised as a broadcast dish.
Although Microsoft and Apple get indirect and direct references in the movie (a Mac is shown prominently in the end), the company which hires Phillippe's character, NURV, is actually more representative of Google, which in 2000 wasn't the juggernaut it is now. In fact, when Rachel Leigh Cook and Ryan Phillippe's character searches for media companies to help them, they actually use a Yahoo search engine (Oh, the horror!). Back to Google. Anyway, the very modern and comfortable NURV headquarters reserved for tech geniuses in the movie is remarkably prescient of Google's own headquarters. Keep this in mind if you end up in the theater watching this year's The Internship with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.
Gasp! Someone's using Yahoo! Search.
Gasp! A PDA! And it's not colored!
Watching the movie again after more than a decade was extremely fun even though I knew the plot already. Part of the entertainment was hindsight, seeing black and white 8-bit cellphone and display screens, Yahoo! during its heyday, the utter amazement of Philippe's character when he found a suspicious piece of fiber optic cable in an apartment, the use of a Java compiler on celluloid, and the words "open source" being used in a movie. Although both IMDB and Wikipedia mention that an old version of Gnome is prominently featured in the movie, it actually gets less than a minute's screen time (I had a hell of a time getting a screen capture). In fact, NURV's vanilla-flavored security system and a brief segment running Unix commands on a terminal gets more exposure.
Synapse Java
Isn't that a bit melodramatic? These days we just go to Github.
Well-known open source and Linux luminaries do get a nod in the film's credits, but don't expect a full-blown conversion to Linux once the film ends. In fact, the only images you'll actually remember are of Rachel Leigh Cook and Claire Forlani's. Unfortunately, you'll also realize that girls like them don't always pay much attention to guys who spend too much time in front a monitor/keyboard and know several thousand Unix commands. Ryan Phillippe's character was irresistible because he was attractive, a genius, and lucky enough to have two lovely ladies conspiring against him. Only in the movies.
Look familiar Linux fans?
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