Startup (film)

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Movie
German title Startup (DEU)
Conspiracy.com (CHE)
Original title Antitrust
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2001
length 108 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Peter Howitt
script Howard Franklin
production Keith Addis
David Nicksay
Nick Wechsler
music Don Davis
camera John Bailey
cut Zach Staenberg
occupation

Startup in Germany and Conspiracy.com in Switzerland (original title: Antitrust ) is an American thriller from 2001 with Ryan Phillippe as a talented programmer and Tim Robbins as the head of a software company. The film is directed by Peter Howitt .

action

The computer geeks Milo Hoffmann and Teddy Chin found a startup company with two other friends in Silicon Valley and developed open source software in a garage . You are a staunch free software programmer . While watching a live interview with Gary Winston, whose company NURV (motto: N ever U nderestimate R adical V ision ) is the most powerful and influential manufacturer of proprietary software , Milo gets a call in which Gary gives him and Teddy a job in his company. Teddy immediately declines, but Milo joins NURV after an impressive visit to Gary's villa. He gets at the heart of an innovative global communications system called the order Synapse to program that will be able to satellite-based all communication devices multimedia to another network .

The working conditions at NURV seem terrific: a friendly, relaxed atmosphere with all amenities, well-paid work, a family-oriented company that obviously places great value on promoting individual creativity . Gradually, however, Milo noticed the corrupt machinations of this company. He notes that Winston is stealing many ideas from independent software developers by watching them work with mini cameras. Through permanent technology theft, NURV secures its international monopoly position and continuous development lead. His friend Teddy was spied on and when he made a significant step in the programming of an open source communication system, he was ambushed and killed by NURV employees. The program code he created flows into the Synapse project.

Milo begins to investigate and learns that he, too, is already being monitored by NURV and that they know all of his vulnerabilities, such as: B. an allergy to sesame seeds . His longtime girlfriend Alice is actually called Rebecca and is also a NURV informant who was smuggled into his life years ago to manipulate him. The group’s day-care center serves as a hidden center for criminal activities, and all spied data is stored there.

Milo turns to his colleague Lisa Calighan, who works as a graphic designer at NURV. He trusts her because he has found out that she is also under secret surveillance and that he found a file on her in the daycare center. Together they develop a plan to publicize the company's illegal activities: They want to use the Synapse system themselves to bring the information they have gathered to the public. With the help of a friend who works for a television station, they try to get access to Synapse's satellite system. But Gary Winston has already heard about the plan from Lisa and is able to delay the broadcast of the reconnaissance program by switching off some satellites in good time. But Milo has secretly taken precautions: He made a second copy of the information gathered and hired a friend to use the company's own satellite system on NURV's premises to broadcast the program. So there's no point that thugs hired by Winston are stopping Milo. So it finally succeeds in hijacking some satellites and broadcasting the " pirate program " worldwide on all television channels . The public learns about the criminal acts of the company NURV, immediately afterwards the source text of the Synapse system is sent and thus becomes freely available knowledge. Gary Winston and his accomplices are arrested.

Reviews

The lexicon of international films wrote that the film was “a cramped high-tech thriller that lacks speed, but above all a convincing narrative and intellectual concept”. The cast cannot compensate for these weaknesses.

Cinema magazine wrote that the film "would be a fine thriller" if the director had "placed as much emphasis on sophisticated tension arcs as on the successful demonization of Bill Gates ". In its existing form, the film was "just as boring as the Windows 2000 screen saver ".

Awards

Peter Howitt won two Shanghai International Film Festival awards in 2001 . Don Davis was nominated for the 2001 World Soundtrack Award . The film was nominated for the Political Film Society Award for Democracy in 2002.

Others

Director Peter Howitt makes a cameo as a homeless person.

Production costs were estimated at 30 million US dollars . The film grossed approximately $ 17.8 million worldwide, including approximately $ 10.97 million in US cinemas.

The various source code fragments that Gary hands over to Milo are excerpts from a Java version of a web server that come from a tutorial by Sun Microsystems . Contrary to what the film claims, they have nothing to do with data compression or anything like that. On the other hand, Milo enters some common Unix / Linux commands to look for clues in the NURV system.

Milo's entry on the computers in the daycare center reads , which is a reference to the novel by George Orwell , which is about government surveillance. show -p 1984

In addition, several HTML source text modules can be seen in the intro , e.g. For example, the website of the Internet Movie Database ; however, the code is invalid in several places.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Startup in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used , accessed on July 26, 2007
  2. ↑ Cinema , accessed July 26, 2007
  3. ↑ Box office. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Tutorial at Sun