Line #1 YMMV/Antitrust


1	* CompleteMonster: [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Gary Winston]] is the owner and founder of NURV, masquerading as a [[VillainWithGoodPublicity charitable philanthropist]] to cover up the dark secrets of his company. Keeping NURV ahead of the competition by [[StealingTheCredit stealing code and intellectual property from others]], Gary's true evil comes from the fact that he has dozens of promising minds on a watchlist, and murders any single one of them if their intelligence reaches the point of being a threat to NURV's technology supremacy. Killing well over half a dozen young programmers and threatening many more to ensure his position is never threatened, Gary tries to do the same to Milo Hoffman for investigating his crimes, and forces a delinquent woman to seduce Milo lest Gary send her back to prison on trumped-up charges.
2	* EvilIsCool: Winston is a horrible person but he's also genuinely charismatic and fun to watch thanks to Creator/TimRobbins likeable performance.
3	* HilariousInHindsight: The film is essentially one giant TakeThat at Microsoft, complete with their chief rival Platform/{{Apple\|Macintosh}} providing ProductPlacement. This became ironic in two ways.
4	** Even at the time, the videotaped interviews on the film's official website could only be viewed using Apple's proprietary [=QuickTime=] format. What happened to your Open Source message, guys?
5	** More importantly, if one fast-forwards to today, they will find that it's ''Apple'' that has come to define the modern image of the tech behemoth, being accused of a lot of the same stuff that Microsoft was at its peak and then some (having a near-monopoly on [=MP3=] players in the '00s, their infamous "terms of service" agreements). Looking back, one could compare Synapse, the evil, corporate-dominated network created by NURV, to the "gated community" that Apple has created for its [=iDevices=], especially in comparison to its open-source rival [[Website/{{Google}} Android]]. Bill Gates, meanwhile, has seen [[PopularityPolynomial his reputation rehabilitated]] since his official departure from Microsoft, spending his time since then focused more on charity work with his wife Melinda.
6	* {{Narm}}: Gary Winston's computer software company is named NURV, standing in for "Never Underestimate Radical Vision". It is already a funny-sounding acronym to begin with, and as geek culture has grown over the years more people would be wondering if [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion somebody on the writing team was an otaku]].
7	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: It was filmed during the height of the dot-com boom and hit theaters only a short time after the bubble started leaking. As such, the hacker and geek culture this film portrays is a snapshot of what it was like to have a good idea literally programmed in a garage and be able to get millionaire venture capitalists ready to front money on almost a moment's notice once they saw it. It also portrays the then-very-prevalent skepticism towards [[VillainWithGoodPublicity Microsoft]], with Apple being little-regarded because of its waning market share.

Context YMMV / Antitrust