Pretty damn good...

I'm just seeing this flick (mad late). Never even heard of it but caught it on cable.
1) Jush Hartnett FINALLY manned up! Damn he had a swagger. Too bad he always seems to lose in all his flicks (except Lucky # Slevin). He had a swagger that almaost makes me believe he could do a real leading man action hero role and not just the pseudo-non threatening "21st century man" he's always rocking.
2) This was a great meditation on the realationship between "progress" and profit. The two rarely are related and often have to pretend to be connected and feign interchangability in order to exist. Hartnett had a vision and a dream. It had no real chance of getting supported unto its own merits BUT got tons of love by selling it as the next big profitable thing. The finance sector NEVER has credibilty unto itself but manages to acquire it by selling itself as a facilitator of progress. As the movie (and history) shows though progress and profit do not always coincide at the same time. The movie does foreshadow and history shows that progress (some forms at least) does ultimately create good business. Hartnetts character was ahead of his time (by about half a decade). Yet he and other dot.com'ers did what they had to do to lay the groundwork for the information age most of us enjoy. In the end he is left alone with only his dreams and dignity again. It is bittersweet but he started something. He couldn't profit from it but in the end everyone else does.
I used to really hate the dot.com start-up "rich kids". I thought they were spoiled arrogant and full of crap. After watching this film I realize that a fair amount of them were really passionate and really fighting an uphill battkle to get support for their revolution the only way our profit first culture allows. They had some guts. And yes all heir wild visions of super bandwith global connectivity came true. I only hope the American "captains of industry" did not die with them.