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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Distinctly underappreciated, November 10, 2009
The Bottom Line:
Weaving an unmistakable atmosphere of gloom over the story of an arrogant dot-commer attempting to keep his dying company afloat several months after most other such companies have collapsed, director Austin Chick elevates August into quite a little modern tragedy; it was panned by critics but between the electric performance by David Bowie in the film's final act, a wonderfully sour Rip Torn, and the aforementioned direction by Chick there is a great deal to like in this already-forgotten picture
3/4
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13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating cast, disappointing film., August 24, 2008
I had wondered when a mainstream film would attempt to show the business sector just prior to 9/11, and this was advertised to be it - all the way down to the month name in the title. By itself August would mean nothing in a title unless it had something to do with what changes the world a couple weeks later.
The casting choices also peaked my interest with David Bowie, Rip Torn, Chirqui and Naomie Harris. Josh Hartnett plays the CEO of an Internet company going through significant financial troubles. He plays the front of the future being extremely bright and everything being OK, even though his company should have been folding yesterday. Especially once the mandated recovery deadline of September 14th passes, the world should be his oyster. With them actually mentioning an important date for their company, I thought the film might go that far chronologically, but they do not.
The story starts right out in the high gear Hartnett's character plays most of the film, but it quickly dissipates into boring subplots, tons of unanswered questions, and eventually really bad acting. Even Torn's performance was staged (on purpose I guess since he is way better than this). The one saving grace comes towards the end with David Bowie's three minutes on screen; he was very believable as the hostile takeover kind of guy. But he vanishes and the film comes to an ambiguous ending that never even alludes to the upcoming destruction. It just fades to black and you realize you just wasted 90 minutes. They do interject one CGI shot of the twin towers, but nothing else ties together to the title relevance.
Hartnett is adequate, but his upcoming role in I Come With the Rain looks significantly more challenging and productive. Chirqui's role was for two scenes, and Torn for just a few minutes. Overall, this can't be given a higher rating as honestly, nothing really happens.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
could have been better but not without interest, October 8, 2010
In "August," Josh Hartnett plays a cocky, twenty-something entrepreneur named Tom Sterling who, for the past several years (the movie is set, rather portentously, in August 2001), has been riding the dot.com wave to easy fame and fortune - though he isn't quite prepared, either financially or emotionally, for the crash that is to come. Landshark, the company he founded with his brother, Joshua (Adam Scott), and of which he is currently CEO, has a couple hundred employees on its payroll, but pretty much everyone who works there is at a loss to explain just what it is the firm does or produces. Even worse, the company that was once valued at well over three-and-a-half million dollars is now worth just a paltry fraction of that amount, the "business model" having apparently failed to pan out as expected.
As written by Howard A. Rodman and directed by Austin Chick, "August" is essentially a cautionary tale set against the get-rich-quick hysteria that came to dominate in the early days of the internet, when virtually anybody with a half-baked idea and a smidgen of techno-savviness could become a high-stakes player on Wall Street. That many of these people were making their fortunes out of little more than the cyber equivalent of chewing gum and bailing wire - while producing nothing of any real substance or value in the long run - is what eventually led to disaster for so many of them and for the economy as a whole.
"August" does a reasonably effective job capturing the moral emptiness and emotional shallowness of the characters and the world they inhabit, but, when all is said and done, the movie lacks the dramatic heft and focus needed to turn it into a profound and major work. The minor characters are bland and insufficiently developed, and even Tom is deficient in the kind of depth and shading he would need to make him a representative "tragic hero" for our time. That being said, the movie does offer some intriguing insights into the way the business world works these days and into which type of individual typically succeeds in the new arena. And which type fails.
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