A Monopoly on Melodrama

Industry Standard, The, Dec 18, 2000 by Reena Jana

Don't blame Hollywood for hating the Wachowski brothers. Since their slick, surreal hit The Matrix, movies that involve computer programming now lack oomph.

MGM's upcoming thriller AntitruSt is a perfect example. Due next month, Antitrust stars pouty heartthrob Ryan Phillippe as Milo, a brilliant Stanford University computer science grad. Phillippe isn't bad as a programmer; his signature blank stare is the perfect accompaniment to his many typing scenes. (White Phillippe doesn't actually know C++, according to the film's production notes, the actor "spoke to a number of geeks in preparing for the role and was surprised he had a good connection with them.")

With more gusto, Tim Robbins co-stars as Gary Winston, the megalomaniacal CEO of software company NURV, which stands for, we kid you not, "Never Underestimate Radical Vision." Winston seduces Milo away from a startup with a Mercedes SUV and stock options (a sure sign the script was locked in place before the market crashed). As the film's title hints, there's got to be a Bill Gates in here somewhere, and Robbins does the trick.

He's got the bowl haircut and glasses, and in a performance that's on the verge of cartoonish, he doesn't hesitate to bully his employees in outbursts as sudden as Puget Sound thundersqualls.

Despite the obvious parody of Microsoft's leader, the film oddly has little to do with lawsuits. The title is more a play on the fact that Winston can't be trusted; when programmers start to die violent deaths, Milo suspects that Winston is not merely ruthless, but bloodthirsty. However, in a coy nod to Microsoft's real-life enemies, Miguel de Icaza, who created the open-source operating system Gnome, and Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy make cameos as themselves. Linux creator Linus Torvalds served as a "technical consultant."

There are some fun, sinister plot twists which add to Milo's paranoia, but in the end Antitrust fails to satisfy as a thriller and trips over its own effort to cash in on current events.