Zuckerberg: Deer in the Headlights?

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2010)

The reviews I had read of "The Social Network" implied that there was a bad guy, but after seeing it tonight I came away feeling that Sorkin had drawn Zuckerberg's character with the compassion and huge brush strokes of insight, snappy dialog and ambiguity for which he is famous. OK, so Zuckerberg made a few mistakes, but for the most part, he was as much a victim of Facebook as its creator. (I know, I know - a rich victim, but a victim of his own and others' ambitions, opportunism and greed.) Rage, anger and frustration are the fuel that fire the world's most brilliant creations; add Facebook to the list. You can't teach that in B school; you can't bottle it, you can't aspire to it either. You have to live through the hard stuff - the rejection, the insecurity, the primal angst (which Zuckerberg had in spades even if Sorkin doesn't beat us over the head with it) to gather the kind of motivation required to take a company where Facebook has gone. Of course, I loved seeing my beloved San Francisco as one of the stars, and getting a snapshot of Sean Parker.