“Antitrust” Blu-ray Review

Antitrust is often chalked up as being a teeny-bopper ripoff of All the President’s Men. While there may be some truth to that analogy, it implies that there’s nothing of merit to Peter Howitt’s early ’00s paranoia thriller—which is most definitely not the case.

Released in 2001, Antitrust finds Milo (Ryan Phillippe), a young computer programmer, being forced to make a difficult decision when billionaire mogul Gary Winston (Tim Robbins) offers him a job at his company. Shortly after accepting the position, Milo discovers that Winston and his associates have plenty of dark secrets and violent ways of taking care of their competitors. Unsure of who he can trust, Milo relies on his longtime girlfriend, Alice (Claire Forlani), and his college friends, to try and expose Winston at all costs.

Significantly less dated than you would imagine a cyber-thriller from nearly fifteen years ago to feel, Antitrust is surprisingly topical. While the technologies themselves are ancient-looking, the subject matter has never been more relevant. The idea of a corporation stealing code from independent programmers isn’t even remotely farfetched, and even though there are some silly James Bond-ish sequences, Antitrust never breaks its own rules or feels out of its element.

The always great Rachael Leigh Cook plays against type and delivers a wonderful performance as Lisa, a mysterious coworker of Milo’s with a traumatic past. There are some pretty melodramatic moments, sure, but Antitrust still manages to work incredibly well as a paranoia-filled popcorn flick. With the help of some pretty clever foreshadowing early on, Howitt and company reveal quite a few unexpected twists and turns. That’s really where Antitrust is at its best—when it’s subverting expectations. Ultimately, it’s a solid little thriller from the era. By no means does it reinvent the genre, but it’s a whole lot of fun anyway.

The Olive Films Blu-ray release of the film has a few bonus features, including Cracking the Code: a behind-the-scenes featurette that is quite entertaining, despite being presented in standard definition. An audio commentary track with Howitt and editor Zach Staenberg provides some solid insight into the film’s creation, and nine deleted scenes as well as the music video for Everclear’s “When It All Goes Wrong Again” round out the disc. It’s nice to see Olive Films going the extra mile and adding bonus content to their releases, and they deserve major kudos for that.

Antitrust arrives on Blu-ray through Olive Films on September 22nd.