Adapted from the biography The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, The Social Network is a compelling, wonderfully entertaining biopic about the chaotic years of the founding of Facebook.
After being dumped by his girlfriend, Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg), a Harvard student and talented hacker, gets even by posting a scornful blog and hacking into photo databases to create a site called Facemash - a platform that prompts users to choose the 'hotter' of two girls. The site goes viral and crashes the university network. This gives Zuckerberg the idea to create a site called 'The Facebook'.
Director David Fincher structures the film around two lawsuits against Zuckerberg: one by his former best bud Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), and the other by the Winklevoss twins, who claim he stole their social network idea. In his biggest role by far, Eisenberg puts in a superb performance as the socially awkward, arrogant Zuckerberg. He's got the geeky speed-talking and idiosyncratic movements down pat. We may never meet Zuckerberg, but this is exactly what we'd imagine him to be. Justin Timberlake plays a supporting role in the movie, for which he hopes to win an Oscar nomination.
And really, how can you go wrong with this tagline: 'You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies'? Genius.
Contains some mature content
