Rating:
Home   |   Foreign Films   |   Books   |   Soundtracks   |   Previews   |   Biographies   |   Articles   |   Contributors   |   Contact
  Matt
  
Willis
Pirates of Silicon Valley
USA, 1999
[Martyn Burke]
Noah Wyle, Anthony Michael Hall, Joey Slotnick, John Di Maggio
Drama / Historical
24th November 2006
What an odd thing to make a movie about, even if it is just a TV movie. Not so much because the story is boring but because it's only half way done (or was, at the time the movie was produced). The rise, and fall, and rise, and fall, and rise again of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is a fascinating tale, filled with plenty of brilliance, and skullduggery. Pirates of Silicon Valley attempts to bring that to the big screen and is marginally succesful, painting neither man in a particularly beautiful nor horrible light. Yes Gates is portrayed as a thief who stole others work to get ahead, but he's also shown as a driven visionary. Jobs on the other hand is shown as almost messianic, but also cripplingly egotistical and naive.

PoSV (as I'm now going to call it) is of obvious interest to me, a recent immigrant to the region. The fact that Gates started off at Harvard and moved down to work in Texas, before setting up shop in Seattle is obviously a flaw in the title but its purpose remains the same. These were the two men who, more than anyone else, shaped the future of the personal computer and the internet. It was they who built companies from nothing and toppled the ancien regime of blue-chip manufacturing and financial service dominance.

Sadly though the film bears all the hallmarks of a TV production, with poor quality film and an eclectic cast. While Wyle (
haha) was on top form with ER at the time he seems oddly uncomfortable playing a real live person and seems quite detached from the proceedings. Michael Hall on the other hand does a rather good Gates impression, all squirrelly and in his own world, but again when it comes to actual acting there doesn't seem to have been any quality control on his part. The only truly good performance comes from Joey Slotnick as Jobs partner Steve 'Woz' Wozniak, who does an amazing impression of Paul Giamatti playing Woz. I honestly believed it was Giamatti till I saw the credits.

The biggest problem the film faces though is the fact that, at the year 1999, the world seemed polarised into Microsoft and everyone else, with Jobs an increasingly marginal figure. The rapid re-emergence of Apple though, with its iMac and, of course, iPod has again shown Jobs to be a powerful force and, to many, the anti-thesis of Gates' world-vision of crapola. As such the ending of the movie, with Gates triumphing over his prostrate  arch-enemy, simply seems false and ruins what was otherwise a mildly engaging 90 minutes of recent-history.
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1