Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Gordon5136 The first 3/4 of this low-budget film may appeal to mathematics and computer science nerds, but to an outsider, it is mainly a bunch of mathematicians standing/sitting around talking their specialized vernacular about some important mathematical breakthrough that could have astounding impact on humanity. As storytelling techniques go, this one was weak in my opinion: it didn't seem very well written and directed. I'm not just saying that just because there was no action at all—just dialogue. I'm saying there were a number of weaknesses: there was no hook to make me want to watch the whole thing (I had to force myself to stay with it), and there was no significant character arc to it. In fact I wasn't really sure who the protagonist was and who the antagonist was. I have to presume they were respectively all the mathematicians on the team versus the government. The actors were good and did their best to not let the film completely implode from countless blasé pages of script.I gather these persons recruited to work on the project must have felt somewhat akin to what the Manhattan Project team felt: excited, optimistic and patriotic about their objectives at first, but later pondering what hell they might very well be unleashing on the world. Toward the end of the film, it starts to get a little interesting and tense—a little! The implications and the risks of success become a little more apparent. But I had to force myself to wade through about an hour of boring static scenes filled with meaningless (to myself, as a non-mathematician) and seemingly endless lingo. Not really very interesting or compelling overall. I forced myself to watch the whole thing, hoping there would be an astonishing climax. It's not one of those "I want eighty minutes of my life back" films, but none-the-less, I cannot recommend it to friends as a good movie to watch.

richardlr65 Some of this is so current that I don't see how it got in when the movie was made. All of the premises and implications are not included but that is irrelevant to the film. If you don't consider the future dystopian, the consequences of this topic, the singularity (should it happen) and the intelligence explosion (should it occur if the singularity occurs), a completely different world for humans is not that far away. In 100 years we may be as intellectually different from now as we are from our million year past ancestors. The evolution into a new species (Kurzweil).From a dystopian viewpoint it would either be the end of our species or a setback of our civilizations by centuries.I've been listening to "end of the world stuff" all my life. I grew up during the intensifying cold war. I was born the year the Soviets detonated their first nuclear weapon and the "duck and cover" stuff started. In any case, my point of view is as at least non-dystopian if not utopian.

vwatttx Well worth your time! Written with thoughtful intelligence. Excellent acting and directing. Minimalist scenes and concise, insightful, and well written dialogue. This one is a must see for an intelligent, thinking man's movie. Barclay is outstanding as the arrogant, not-so-likable protagonist. A moral debate set in a "can we?" versus "should we" political and social forum against our current pace of technological floodwater innovations. An interesting look at the "super math nerds" from HS and college, who now may determine our collective future. Real world applications versus the "think tank" atmosphere of research and academia...

ericnottelling Let me start by saying I don't rate very many movies in the 8 9 or 10s but this one is a solid 9! I'm as harsh and hard a critic as they come but this movie was so well done it is hard not to like it. The movie has a solid dialog that drives the movie forward like a raging bull with great simplistic camera shots and settings. You can count the settings on 1 hand and they are well done and fit the tone of the dialog superbly. This movie is no doubt a low budget master piece and as a script writer think it is an amazing piece for younger writers to learn from. You don't need huge budgets to produce incredible work! It is a striking movie in the sense of Primer and I commend both writers for this excellent work. I back the AMC notion that story matters and they have produced a great one! You will love this movie! The only reason I did not give this movie a 10/10 is that I had to look up what P = NP is. If you are reading to deiced what if you are going to view the movie, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified by a computer can also be quickly solved by a computer. Enjoy this film!