First Hit: An absolutely wonderfully engaging film.
From the first opening moments this film puts you on notice; pay attention to the dialogue and that this film is about the main character Mark Zuckerberg.
Jesse Eisenberg clearly makes Zuckerberg his character and you’ll not be able to take your eyes off him when he is on the screen.
This film is not authorized by Zuckerberg and therefore there are questions about it truthfulness. Yet much of the film comes from interviews and court records which came to pass because Zuckerberg was sued by a college roommate and other college acquaintances in which he had made a business agreement with.
Regardless of the exact truth, the story is engaging and mostly because of the fine acting by Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield as his roommate and initial CFO Eduardo Saverin, and Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker (Sean Fanning) founder of Napster. The story doesn’t delve into the workings of Facebook and the decisions to add types of functionality into the product.
The story is about Zuckerberg and some of the motivations and single mindedness around creating Facebook as something that would change the world. The film is a study in different types of people and what motivates them. My only downside to this film was that the first scene showed an intense and somewhat angry young man, I wondered how Zuckerberg had gotten this way.
Eisenberg is wonderful at bringing the single mindedness of Zuckerberg to life. Watching Zuckerberg in interviews, especially the hour + long one recently held at a computer museum, it is clear that Eisenberg matched the fact that Zuckerberg is extremely intelligent and is unafraid to chart his own course and willing to make mistakes along the way. Garfield is strong as the jilted and shocked roommate who started with owning 7% of Facebook stock which was stripped to .03% by Zuckerberg. Timberlake is spot on as the wonderkind Parker (Fanning) who brought down the music business with his file sharing program and who shared his knowledge of what it takes to create a huge internet based business. Aaron Sorkin wrote the intense and wonderfully succinct screenplay. David Fincher expertly directed this team of actors through the complexities of the subject.
Overall: This is a very entertaining and interesting film, well worth the price of admission.