It's a shame to have a conversatin about a movie without GORdon saying were wrong, he's right, and that's the end of the discussion.

But I'll try to manage.

I think the writer/director, Shane, as a first time everything was still new to the delicate balance of what to reveal and what not to reveal in order to make your story interesting. There was a lot of really interesting stuff in there of which the audience goes totally unaware until the last few moments. I think it was just plain a mistake that we didn't understand certain things at times during the film. Like the question of what do you do with the doubles? Obviously we find out they were killing them. Was that the plan the whole time? Did the other guy ever kill his double. Now... that is something the characters would definitely have known they were doing and it's something we should have understood. Not only would we better understand the process, but it would add a dimension to the film. just like that they were trading stocks that they knew the performance of. We got that. It's okay to "get" things in movies - it makes you understand the characters.

The biggest lesson I learned on my first film project was that communicating your story to the audience is like speaking through a pillow. If you have to communicate and idea while holding a pillow to your face, you are going to need to simply it and speak very clearly. You're not gonig to go on unnecessary tangents. (don't try this at home, could be dangerous, it's a random metaphor.)

The point being it's important to lead your audience and keep them up with you. Of course, then the question becomes - how much of your hand do you tilt? What cards do you play when? What cards do you never play?

Easier to take a scene out that do reshoots.


Personally, having grown up in silicon valley pre-dot com boom when all those hundreds of computer makers like Apple and a bunch of other companies like Grid were making computers in their garages - the story had a huge appeal to me from that perspective. And I liked that it felt so accurate and how they didn't have a lot of money to build the thing and they were borrowing pieces of refridgerators and cars. I thought what ended up being the story was interesting and wish I had seen more of it played out.

The acting was really light unfortunately. I liked the near documentary style of the filim though.

He seems like he was trying to play this thing about growing distrust, and I must say that that was not seen at all in the performance and it could have been.

I don't think all movies need to be about extraordinary people - especially when they are doing extraordinary things. Sometimes what makes them extraordinary is that they made a choice to make or do something incredible... or stumble upon something and pursue it until it became incredible.