"Every Creation Myth Needs A Devil"

Rating: 8/10 (10 November 2010)

Firstly may I say that I am not, nor have I ever been a member of Facebook. And, after seeing the ruthless, cutthroat way the website was set up by Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), I have no inclination to join it at any time in the future (if only to stop job interviewers and the Taxman spying on me to see if I'm telling the truth.)
The above quote about every creation myth needing a Devil sums up the movie. You could argue that Zuckerberg is the Lucifer who wants to take over Eduardo Saverin's Heaven (played by Anthony Perkins lookalike Andrew Garfield), the difference being that it's God (Saverin) who gets cast out of the kingdom, not Zuckerberg. Enter Napster creator Shawn Fanning (Justin Timberlake) and the movie then becomes a retelling of the Faust legend with Zuckerberg being completely seduced by Fanning's promises of wealth and power but he must sacrifice friendship to achieve it. (If you ever wanted proof that Nice Guys Finish Last, just see Eduardo Saverin here.) Jesse Eisenberg has been typecast as nerds in his career so far (e.g. Zombieland), but he's never played one as well as he does here and such a complex one at that. I don't know the real Mark Zuckerberg, but he is portrayed here as an undoubtedly talented computer programmer/hacker (A genius? Who knows, maybe.) He certainly has a ferocious focus, confidence and drive for such a young man. He is also two-faced, arrogant and completely unreliable. Essentially, Zuckerberg's character boils down to him being a hyper-sensitive, vengeful nerd with a chip on his shoulder, endlessly trying to get one over on the people he views as superior to him, even if they want to help him.
I've never really understood the appeal of Justin Timberlake to women. I've always thought he was a rather plain-looking guy who tried too hard to act black and was really only famous for having once dated Britney Spears. But if he's half as devilishly charming in real life as he is in this movie, I can see why he's catnip to the ladies (his millions don't hurt either, right). Timberlake was a leftfield casting choice by director David Fincher that pays off brilliantly.
The women in the movie are treated like cattle, but then again so are the men who get stepped on by Zuckerberg and Fanning as they rise to power. (I had no idea that Asian women were such a commodity among the rich).
The script is by Aaron Sorkin, a writer who's been around for a long time. He wrote A Few Good Men as far back as 1992 and The West Wing, but this is far and away the best thing he's ever written and he's sure to get an Oscar nomination for his work, if not win the coveted statuette outright. The movie has parallels with Citizen Kane and Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (when the girl in the opening scenes accuses Zuckerberg of having OCD, the parallels with that other young American billionaire Howard Hughes are made clear).
It's hard to break new ground when you've been a movie director for 18 years, but David Fincher has managed to do that here. You can't compare it to anything he's done before. He could well be an Oscar contender too.