Mesmerizing network - Entertainment, Movies - Navy Times

Mesmerizing network

Checking Facebook while writing my review of “The Social Network,” I notice my hairstylist commenting on how freakishly hot it’s been in Los Angeles.

My dog trainer has seven new friends. A classmate from college is celebrating a birthday.

They’re the usual mundane updates and observations that have become second nature — all part of who we are and how we live and work. But the origin of Facebook itself is high drama, filled with betrayal and rage — just one of the fascinating contradictions that make “The Social Network” so smart, meaty and compulsively watchable.

Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin have created an epic tale about how social networking has made it possible for users to tell the world about the tiniest details of their lives. They depict potentially dry, unwieldy topics — computer coding and competing lawsuits — in an intimate way. These guys aren’t constantly checking their smart phones for new friend requests, but “The Social Network” represents the best of what they do: Fincher’s mastery of fluid, visual storytelling, Sorkin’s knack for crisp, biting dialogue. It’s sharp, funny and tense, has great energy and pulsates with the thrill of discovery.

Why we think people are itching to discover so much about us is a conversation for another time. But at age 19, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg figured out that we’d want to do just that — while screwing around on his computer one night in 2003, drunkenly miffed after his girlfriend dumped him.

At least, that’s how the story goes; Facebook calls the movie fiction. Still, here we are, 500 million users strong worldwide, and here Zuckerberg is, billions of dollars richer, a socially inept guy who came up with a revolutionary way for others to connect, a hugely inventive genius who’s also depicted as being small, petty and back-stabbing.

Jesse Eisenberg rises beautifully to the challenge of portraying Zuckerberg as an unlikable protagonist and making us feel engaged by him. Eisenberg hones the awkward intelligence that’s become his trademark in films such as “The Squid and the Whale” and “Adventureland,” but there’s an edge to it now, a bitterness that makes him the most dangerous nerd ever.

Based on Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires,” ‘‘The Social Network” couldn’t be more timely, with Trent Reznor’s synth-heavy score contributing to the contemporary, techie vibe. But it’s a classic tale of ambition, greed, ego and self-destruction. It looks like a Fincher film with its dark, smoky warmth. “The Social Network” moves with great verve, but it’s all about the dialogue, with patter so brisk, it’ll make you feel as if you’re watching a 1940s screwball comedy.

Fincher cuts back and forth between the creation of what we now know to be the juggernaut of Facebook and the depositions in two lawsuits against Zuckerberg — one from a group of Harvard classmates who say Zuckerberg agreed to help them establish their own on-campus social network, then stole their idea and formed his own; the other from his former business partner and only close friend, who says he was cheated out of millions after providing the earliest financial backing.

Each is certain of his telling of the events. “The Social Network” lets us watch them all play out and gives us enough credit to decide for ourselves.

Rated PG-13 for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language. Christy Lemire writes for The Associated Press.