Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin, with Kevin Spacey in the executive producer chair, engineered a skillfully entertaining film, fueled with talent that keeps you marveling through the end. Every word, every scene and within every character shines genius, humor, irony, and most of all, the guts that make this film significant to the Facebook generation.
“The Social Network” is what you want to see at the movies with your family, friends or a date. This film is exciting, witty and overflows with alluring and pitiless dialogue.
Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, executes the role without a flaw. You’ll want to take notice of Andrew Garfield’s outstanding portrayal of Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s rich best friend, who he brought on as business manager. I can’t wait to see more from him on the silver screen.
Justin Timberlake was also captivating in Sorkin’s adaptation of Napster’s bad boy, Sean Parker, who had a major role in what eventually became Facebook. Rooney Mara plays a small, but important part as Zuckerberg’s girlfriend, Erica Albright. I haven’t seen her in anything before, but the girl can deliver a Sorkin script like she was born to do it.
I was sitting on the edge of my seat from beginning to the end. In the first scene, Zuckerberg is annoying, and methodically insulting, to his girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara), and triggers a break-up. The anger leads Mark to his dorm room where he drinks and blogs malevolent things about his now, ex. In his angered and drunken state, he hacks into photo files of female Harvard undergrads creating “facemash,” a program that ranked the girls’ hotness level. Because of “facemash’s” popularity, Zuckerberg gets a lot of attention from the angry school and students. He is driven to do something to get to a better life and in the process, he creates the very thing that many of us can’t live without. Yes, I am talking about Facebook.
“The Social Network” is a sharp and clear-cut image of what happened according to of the lawsuits concerning Facebook. Sorkin’s clever screenplay makes the film accurate and entertaining. He jumped on the project after reading a smidgen of Ben Mezrich’s book proposal “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook. A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal,” which is out on bookshelves.
David Fincher proves yet again that he knows what scripts to pick as with “Se7en” and “Fight Club” and how to make them fascinating through the end. This one is going to get attention during award season. I’ll bet on it.
