August (2008)

Interesting solely when viewed as an aesthetic antecedent to The Social Network, with its shadowy interiors and pulsing dark electronic soundtrack, but this is a small story that made for a small movie. There's nothing wrong with small movies, of course, but August's ambitions run deeper; it's got some Very Important Things to say about the stock market, and tech, and Faustian power-grabs. Also noble, but when Josh Hartnett delivers a puerile anti-capitalism monologue halfway through the film and is universally applauded for it, the movie's intentions become both clear and undefendable. The movie discourages us from clashing with Tom Sterling's perspective, and even though that big caps-locked HUBRIS stamp ultimately brings him down, it obviously wants us to see him as a misunderstood, insecure bad boy of business. August's ridiculous bias hits its boiling point with an insane, scenery-chewing performance by Rip Torn, where he growls about Oreos and attacks Josh Hartnett with some quasi-Enron "it doesn't do anything if you can't explain what it does" argumentation. See? He's just trying to prove to his grumpy blue-collar daddy that he can work too. Do you guys get it yet? If you don't, we can repeat the scene almost verbatim forty minutes later.

It's hard to tell if Tom Sterling is a failed character because of the script or because of Hartnett's performance. He seems to have a rich understanding of the material (he also produced the film), but I think he lacks the range of expression required to humanize this character. Really, despite what August wants us to think, Tom really just comes across as an incompetent asshole. Short of an effortless deflation by David Bowie late in the film, he's actually part of very few substantial events through the course of the story, so there aren't many opportunities to see him react other than trying to overwhelm his problems with sheer bullheadedness. I guess it's a deficiency of writing, for the most part, but the point is that it's a character piece that fails. It's unique, and not a total disaster, but August is entirely skippable.