Watching films on their last rounds in the cinema can be much better than on their opening few weeks – you get to sit where you want, fewer people making noise and you get a sense of finality with the film as if you watching a moment passing in time (before it transfers to DVD).
This I have done with The Town and The Social Network. The former continues the resurrection of Ben Affleck’s career (for after its nadir of Gigli, it was clinically dead). Affleck is even returning to something approaching a blockbuster (in which he had a hand in writing), with high-tempo action in what is essentially a one-last-time heist movie. He is ably supported by a cast that includes the impressive Jon Hamm (fresh out of Mad Men) in the guise of a sharp FBI man and ever dependable Pete Postlethwaite as a psychotic florist(!). It’s an enjoyable, if brutal, ride and Affleck’s scenes with Rebecca Hall (born in my town, London, two months before I came into the world) are touching as you are kept guessing how his involvement with this former hostage of his gang will resolve itself (the ending is not Hollywood-style conventional). The grand finale is set at the Boston Red Sox baseball ground, with much free-plugging of John W Henry’s stateside venture. Should the film be remade in a British setting, no doubt some of Liverpool’s more deprived areas would be a neat fit with the background, climaxing in an assault on the Anfield ground – although this time John W Henry would perpetrating grand larceny on himself by purchasing the becalmed football club.
The Social Network is a very good film in a different way, charting the rise of Facebook. Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, the computer genius who dropped out of Harvard to become the world’s youngest billionaire. Eisenberg’s portrayal, speaking in near-binary with the sarcastic asides programmers occasionally slip into their projects, in hand with Aaron Sorkin’s lacerating script, makes the movie a real hatchet job on Zuckerberg. Arrogant, condescending, jealous, but hey, he’s not an asshole, he’s “just trying to hard to be one.” From what I have seen of Mark Zuckerberg’s public appearances, he appears confident and charismatic, much closer indeed to Justin Timberlake, who features in the movie as a well-cast Sean Parker, the creator Napster, though Parker doesn’t emerge from this picture in a good light either (which is not what I am implying about Zuckerberg). A magnetic personality who is also a visionary, Parker also comes across as a narcissistic user of people, a real cold bastard. The third protagonist (if you discount the Winklevoss grouping) is Eduardo Saverin, a co-creator of Facebook, who was frozen out and lost virtually all his stock holding when the company went public. Andrew Garfield plays him as a put-upon, loyal and cautious, persisting with a girlfriend, Christy (Brenda Song), who with no character development swerves from easy-going girl (in more ways than one) to an insane nightmare of a squeeze, purely for script purposes to illustrate an angle of Saverin. It is a little confusing at the start, as the various law-suits cascade into each other, but as the film progresses the jigsaw fits together. The David Fincher-directed, Kevin Spacey-executive produced flick ends with a question that the audience can decide upon, along with the hackneyed moral that money doesn’t buy you love. It is a great ride though, which keeps you talking with who you went with all the way home.