A document of our times

Rating: 8/10 (23 September 2011)

The subject matter really isn't as interesting as the film makes it out to be - the story of Facebook is a pretty standard one in the world of internet entrepreneurship, and in the long run, I suspect, will not be more than a historical footnote, which is of course the risk you take when making a movie about current or recent events. The film itself, though, is masterfully done, extremely fast-paced without ever losing the audience's attention, and skillfully avoids dozens of very expected clichés, making it, to all purposes, the first solid mainstream work from David Fincher. We may have lost Fincher the angsty bad boy forever, but we may have a new Spielberg on our hands.