Milo: Ryan Phillippe	Gary Winston: Tim Robbins
Lisa: Rachael Leigh Cook	Alice: Claire Forlani
Teddy: Yee Jee Tso	Agent Barton: Richard Roundtree
Director: Peter Howitt	Larry: Tygh Runyan

30 Second Bottom Line: A Bill Gates look-alike billionaire plans to control a new technology but may be thwarted by a young college graduate.

Story Line: Milo (Ryan Phillippe) and Teddy (Yee Jee Tso) are recent college graduates who dream of being the newest group of young titans who start a successful computer company based in their garage (e.g., HP and Apple). Their business plan, which requires substantial venture capital to get it through the next and final phases, becomes a source of conflict between them.

Milo's first real contact with the billionaire owner of NUVR (Never Underestimate Radical Vision), Gary Winston (Tim Robbins), occurs while looking at a live web cast on TV. Gary responds with corporate double talk to Milo's email, turning a legitimate question regarding business ethics into a public relations message. When the phone rings and it's Gary Winston calling him, Milo at first thinks it's a sham until he sees that it is really happening on live TV. The conversation that follows results in an interview at the lakeside home of Winston where he shares his vision with Milo.

Winston has a product launch deadline to meet, allegedly because of stock market expectations. The situation is similar to when a new version of Windows is being released. In this case, it's for a new technology called SYNAPSE, which is a global satellite system that will allow all communications devices to work seamlessly with each other.

Milo and Teddy think this type of technology should be free, with their income coming solely from support contracts. Winston justifies charging for it for reasons such as being able to donate large amounts of money to charitable causes, as others may not be so philanthropically inclined. He's also a competitive guy who believes that the one or zero binary code of computers relates to being alive or dead, "…there is no second place."

Winston needs the genius of Milo to resolve problems with the satellite code in the downlinks to meet the launch date. Milo is one of only 20 people in the world with the skills to make it happen and he does not have the entrepreneurial passion of Teddy to starve by working in a garage. Teddy and Milo have a falling out when Milo decides to take the corporate job with Winston and move to Portland with his girlfriend Alice (Claire Forlani). If you are starting to notice similarities to Bill Gates, you are right on target.

When Milo starts working at NUVR, he gets a lot of one on one time with Gary. Milo's antenna is raised concerning Gary's real motives as mysterious progress is made from unidentified sources clearly outside of the huge staff of company developers.

The suspense begins in the film after Gary utters the words, "The answer is not in the box, it's in the band." Shortly before this, Teddy is viciously attacked, allegedly because he is Asian American. His friend Larry (Tygh Runyan) uses the same words as he consoles Milo. Hearing them the second time, Milo knows they could have only come from some type of spy operation based at NUVR.

This awareness leads to Milo conducting risky investigations to learn more about the secrets in the highly secure NUVR campus complex. It becomes a huge game of cat and mouse with Milo at times being one step ahead and at others one step behind.

Tell Me More About It: In sports movies where the good guys or underdogs must win at the end, we know that Milo will slay the dragon since it appears the government can't. It seems that our politicians with their soft money and lobbyists negate the efforts of the lawyers in the Department of Justice to squelch monopolistic, greedy and evil corporations such as NUVR.

What's best about the film is the way in which characters are introduced, such as Agent Barton (Richard Roundtree), Larry, Teddy, and Lisa (Rachael Leigh Cook). Almost everyone in the film acts differently than you are initially lead to expect. Agent Barton tries to get Milo to work for the Justice Department for $42,000 a year and a Buick as compared to far more money and a Mercedes SUV at NUVR. Along the way, some of the people you think are friends, are "sleeping with the enemy." The flip side of that is Milo finds help in some surprising places.

From a political perspective, AntiTrust shows the smile in your face, stab them in the back mentality of corporate America. There is a continuing thirst for the desire of mega mergers that contribute to corporate profits and shareholder value at the expense of the consumer. Any attempt to be objective and introspective (like Traffic treats the drug trade) regarding technology firms is lost when Scott McNeely of Sun MicroSystems, a real life arch enemy of Bill Gates, gives an award to one of the college graduates on TV.

Bill Gates is ruthless, but he is the world's richest man, with a monopoly on operating systems for PC's in large part because of what others did not do. Microsoft was a partner with IBM to develop a system that migrated from DOS to a graphical user interface (GUI), which is what makes Windows so useful in spite of it's relatively high cost and numerous bugs you can count on when it's first released. IBM was further along in the development of the GUI than Microsoft in the early 1990's.When the companies "divorced" what happened next determined the winner in the race between OS/2 (IBM) and Windows. Guess who won!

IBM decided to market OS/2 as an operating system to technology people, as they had done so well for their mainframes. This was a key factor in IBM's prior success. Microsoft took the approach of marketing Windows as an application (like Word or Excel) to end-users. One implies easy to use from day one, with compromises in function and the other has more function but has a very steep learning curve. Microsoft chose the correct approach and IBM did not.

Add to that the numerous mistakes made by Novell, which gave up huge market share and growth to Microsoft with its NT system. NT is like Windows for businesses that require networking and a more stable platform. Novell lost sight of keeping the systems engineers of the world happy when Microsoft went after them with fancy certifications.

Apple helped with their continuing policy of not subscribing to open architecture, which IBM did for its hardware platform. Apple has limited their growth not only for their hardware sales, but for other companies making computers that use their operating system. Application developers have limited resources to make launch deadlines and must make a choice on which operating systems to support. It was clear that Microsoft was the platform to choose if they wanted to stay in business. Microsoft was making good business decisions while others were making very bad ones.

But with all of that, Microsoft is what it is, and they will continue to be the operating system of choice for IBM compatible PC's. Because they got there sort of "accidentally on purpose" should not mean they are allowed to act like a monopoly. Look at how the consumer is treated by the utility companies that provide our telephone, electricity and heating services, and it's clear the government needs to be involved to protect the things we must have. And just like telephones, electricity and heating are not options, neither is something to make our computers work.

AntiTrust provides good, not great entertainment, while raising issues that may not be as important as drugs, but it may come close.

Ryan Phillippe: The Way of the Gun	Tim Robbins: Mission To Mars
Rachael Leigh Cook: Get Carter	Claire Forlani: Meet Joe Black
Tygh Runyan: Screwed	Richard Roundtree: Shaft
Peter Howitt: Sliding Doors	Yee Jee Tso: Past Perfect