User reviews

In "August," Josh Hartnett plays a cocky, twenty-something entrepreneur named Tom Sterling who, for the past several years (the movie is set in the early 2000s), has been riding the dot.com wave to easy fame and fortune - though he isn't quite prepared, either financially or emotionally, for the crash that is to come. Landshark, the company he founded with his brother, Joshua (Adam Scott) and of which he is currently CEO, has a couple hundred employees on its payroll, but pretty much everyone who works there is at a loss to explain just what it is the firm does or produces. Even worse, the company that was once valued at well over three-and-a-half million dollars is now worth just a paltry fraction of that amount, the "business model" having apparently failed to pan out as expected.

As written by Howard A. Rodman and directed by Austin Chick, "August" is essentially a cautionary tale set against the get-rich-quick hysteria that came to dominate in the early days of the internet, when virtually anybody with a half-baked idea and a smidgen of techno-savviness could become a high-stakes player on Wall Street. That many of these people were making their fortunes out of little more than the cyber equivalent of chewing gum and bailing wire – while producing nothing of any real substance or value in the long run – is what eventually led to disaster for so many of them and for the economy as a whole.

"August" does a reasonably effective job capturing the moral emptiness and emotional shallowness of the characters and the world they inhabit, but, when all is said and done, the movie lacks the dramatic heft and focus needed to turn it into a profound and major work. The minor characters are bland and insufficiently developed, and even Tom is deficient in the kind of depth and shading he would need to make him a representative "tragic hero" for our time. That being said, the movie does offer some intriguing insights into the way the business world works these days and into which type of individual typically succeeds in the new arena. And which type fails.

In New York City, during the George W. Bush Administration, handsome tattooed Josh Hartnett (as Thomas "Tom" Sterling) struggles to keep his multi-million dollar "dot.com" business going, after the stock market slides downward in "August" of 2001. His partner, the "creative genius" of the organization, is Adam Scott (as Joshua "Josh" Sterling), a nervous new papa. Mr. Hartnett is optimistic, even when it comes to beautiful brown-skinned ex-girlfriend Naomie Harris (as Sarrah).

Singer-musician David Bowie has a cameo, as wheeler-dealer mogul after Hartnett's business.

Unfortunately not a great film, but "August" should put director Austin Chick and cinematographer Andrij Parekh on a watch list; their green-hued New York looks rich. Showing off his long torso, Hartnett still needs that great movie role; besides looking good, he performs the unfocused character well. With a tight soundtrack and trendy script ("My bad", "Hey yourself"), this "August" doesn't stick because the short-lived drama is, like Hartnett's character says, "so over" and "way over."

***** August (1/22/08) Austin Chick ~ Josh Hartnett, Adam Scott, Naomie Harris, Robin Tunney

I like this film, takes the viewer into a strange world that had really existed Perhaps I'm too much of an insider to judge this film from a purely objective orientation, but as a quasi refugee of sorts from the dot com frenzy days, "August" does connect on multiple levels.

Sadly, I've met more than my share of "Tom" characters in real life, and for the most part, that entire world has faded away into obscurity. It was a strange time, when the real world seemed evermore like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Though there might have been some minor glitches in the film, I think overall it captured the essence of that period and its odd collection of characters surprisingly well.

If there is any one film that is a portal into that culture and time, and does so in an entertaining but reasonably accurate way, this would be that film. It certainly deserves notice and the time it takes to watch, which is a lot more than can be said for some other attempts at this genre'.

Perhaps its because i don't really know anything about the stock market and my ignorance in that area relates to how much i enjoyed the film, maybe if i knew anything about stocks i would have enjoyed the film as much as some of the other people who have commented...but i didn't. I am a fan of josh hartnett and thought the acting was good i just don't think he and the rest of the cast had anything to work with. Perhaps if there was more information about there struggling company as well as more general background info i would have spent less time staring blankly at the wall and more time staring at the film.

i wouldn't recommend this film to someone like me who knows nothing about wall street but then again i wouldn't recommend this even if you worked on wall street, without more background i think this film has greatly reduced its target audience which could have been potentially every one to a small percentage.

August is a very finite and pointed film. It's a low-flying indie sleeper that has its points to make and it makes them quite effectively. Above all it really manages to nail a small moment in time, that of the dot-com implosion.

I, along with many others I'm sure, was part of a dot com start-up similar in some respects to Landshark. It was very common in those days of over-hyped speculation to bet tons of VC generated start-up capital on IDEAS that looked promising, when in reality much needed to happen before they could be realized. This didn't hold true for all start-ups, but a fair majority.

It's very easy to get caught up in the delusion that you're a "real" company when your stock is shooting up the charts and quite a glass of ice water to the face to realize all that speculated valuation can disappear overnight, which it did slowly over the course of late 2000 and 2001...it was never really there to begin with.

August grabs that bursting bubble in a number of effective ways. As the film progresses, it becomes apparent that for all of Tom's boasting and bluster, he's nothing more than a hyped-up spin doctor. Watching this revelation sink his ego is entertaining if not more than a bit sad. Hartnett does an adequate job with the role.

The most true-to-life scene for me was the mass of staffers flocking around F**kedCompany.com, which was a popular barometer for the sink-age rate of companies about to go belly-up, instead of lounging at their Ikea desks playing solitaire...they're not lazy, they just have nothing to do...no customers, no product.

As a film, this is a tough one to sell to an audience who doesn't have first-hand experience in the story's premise. There is a lot of business/financial terminology/slang thrown around that to those not knowledgeable or interested in it will seem very boring.

It does what Indies do best...present a slice of life, with no pat clichés or feel-good endings. And for that, I liked it.

this film was so bad i had to go out of my way to come here and tell others not to waste their time.

the lead actor is supposed to be a pretty boy but he's actually hard to look at and his acting so bad it's unbearable. his character is awkward and arrogant, but it doesn't work to the film's advantage at all, it just makes the part too hard to play.

there is so much mood filler of the lead walking around looking dreary and serious, so many meaningless one dimensional, totally uninteresting little vignettes of pointless dialogue, so little in the way of real conflict or drama between the main characters, the film is absolutely pointless.

This is the surprise of the year so far for me.

This excellent little film tells a story of two brothers and their struggling company in a timeline that just precedes 9/11. Several people on IMDb have commented that they don't see why the movie needed to be "cheapened with a 9/11 theme" or some such nonsense. Let's be clear: this movie is not about 9/11 but this was historically a crucial point for the dot-com bubble.

The movie does actually a wonderful job highlighting these events, without spelling them out in some awkward exposition. The story focuses mostly on one of the brothers: The Charismatic Tom (played by Josh Hartnett), who mostly handles the business aspects. Director Austin Chick does a good job immersing us in his life, his lifestyle, his struggles and his ambiguities. His uneasy rapports with his brother Joshua, co-founder of the company "Landshark", who is the quiet "tech guy" behind the operation. With his parents. His former girlfriend. Various other persons in his life and business dealing. It's an absolutely fascinating portrait. What really helps is Hartnett's performance. Now, I'm sorry to say I never was a fan of this fairly popular actor and he had failed to impress me until now... but this has changed. Hartnett is in fact the main strength of this movie, makes the story come alive and shines among a very, very solid cast around him. Tom's role as a confident, brash young guy who must keep appearance and keep his company afloat while he knows it's going down (along with his personal life) required a good acting palette.

It is a strength of the movie that it manages to push both the story of Tom and present an interesting portrait of this time period where economically, things were crashing. What we have here is a movie that could very well have been boring to death due to its topic (finances are a fairly abstract thing, and usually not terribly interesting unless they're your own) but instead becomes fascinating. In many ways, it is reminiscent of Wall Street. Various speeches that Tom delivers and his bout of negotiations lead to several strong moments.

This is a great movie. Where pretty much every scene is worthwhile and supports the overall themes that are pushed. Director Chick seems to have a purpose with every element presented and even the elements not present. Consider: we never get to know what Landshark does. At all. Which might seem weird yet is terribly fitting since along with other shooting star companies of the time, it was all a smoke screen anyway.

Great movie, probably a must buy for those who have an interest in the dot-com bubble.

The best part about this movie was the music score. And that was average. The movie reminded me of a snapshot of anyone's life. Why would I want to watch that? It wasn't funny, it wasn't suspenseful, and it wasn't witty. The writing was bland. There was zero plot. One of the characters in the movie mentioned the company was running on fumes. I think the movie itself was running on fumes.

The main character also smokes a lot. I've always found that directors who feel their characters need a "smoke prop" are using it to make up for the lack of something in the movie. In this case the movie lacked an actual plot.

Screened this at the Sundance 2008 Festival. This movie actually caught me by surprise, it was very hip and surprisingly Josh Hartnett really brought it. The movie has a modern "Wall Street" type vibe, the story follows Tom (Hartnett) who is a super confident .com entrepreneur who is in crisis mode during the downward spiral of the .com stock bust just before September 2001. Hartnet nails this role with high energy output and makes this a very watchable flick. Austin Chick the director is obviously very talented and throws just the right amount of style and cool music into the film to keep it slick and contemporary which should broaden its appeal past just the Gen-X group. The one downside is that the film gives the other characters so little room to make their presence felt, especially David Bowies character who gets only a few minutes of face time. Other then that the movie really has a nice pace and the ending worked very well when you consider all the superficial things that Americans thought they cared about until Sept 2001, and then realized there are somethings much more important then money and stature.

Film should get some nice play on the indie circuit, though indie folks probably will be hard swayed to pay over for a Hartnett movie. I would reckon that Josh Hartnett will win over some who doubted him with this performance and maybe even get a little award type talk. I know its hard for me to believe either :)

genre is stated as 'drama'. am i wrong if expecting some "drama"? "thing" is stated as 'a movie'. am i wrong if expecting entertainment of some/any kind? should i NOT expect some kind of 'a story'? should i just sit there, watch some people wondering around, talking in brief-cut sentences about some business which is going bad, understand they want it to fly-high (wow), NOT having any interest, what so ever, if they are going to make it or not, because even after 20 agony minutes i haven't got a clue about their lives, desires, minds, personalities etc.? so i gave up. 20 minutes were just enough for me. maybe those guys who loved this thing, found something wonderful in the 21st minute and on. good for them. there are so many more movies out there, interesting from

• or almost from - the beginning, and life is short so...

Watched this movie online on Netflix last night. Strange, the movie was released theatrically July 11,2008 but is not only already on DVD but can be watched instantly on Netflix.

So not only are movies straight to video but straight to instant viewing. Fine by me. Terrific movie. Critically panned though. Neither critics or fans understood the product this imploding .com company was selling or the fact that the product didn't matter. The plot in August is beset by ominious news stories preceeding "fall".

I thought the movie was terrific. I got it. The scene with David Bowie was SUPERB. I can't tell you enough about his character and the "nose bleed" he gives the protagonist - which comes down to the whole point of the movie and what's important in life. Also important is... the people you crush when rise to the top, you'll see on the way down when you fall. Or however the expression goes. In other words, PLAY NICE.

Analysis: Recommend

Good storytelling can either tell you what happens, tell you how it was, or both. Most moviegoers, the superficial ones, watch a movie for the "what happens." They want to meet a character that they like and see something good happen to them with a good in between. And so when they watch a movie they expect a story and they like it or dislike it without considering everything that the movie is trying to do. Don't make that mistake when watching August.

August is a movie that tells a story, a "this is what happened to Tom and his company and his brother and his life", but that is not the REAL of this movie. This movie does a much better job of telling the movie watcher a "this is how it was" than a "this is what happens." So when you watch August, which i think you should, absorb the movie for the parts that elaborate on the environment, the time, place, and attitudes, surrounding August 2001, not just the story or the dialog or the sometimes lack thereof.

It's a movie that tells the story of two brothers that started a dotcom that survived the tech bubble collapse and its story in reality does the job of representing the not so apparent futures of the people left in the dotcom world after its demise.

What is even more enjoyable about the movie than its overall plot, which, like i said, isn't the real story, is Josh Hartnett's character, who not only represents the image of the dotcom-er CEO circa 1999 but also speaks the truly empty rhetoric of the times that feed and fueled the tech bubble for so long. Just listening to his speech and realizing that he's talking about practically nothing but making it sound like he's preaching the new age gospel, the evangelical oratory of the e-generation, in part, produces the statement the movie is trying to make about the times.

So don't watch this movie for the "story" or to "see what happens." Watch this movie with the understanding that its a movie that tries to capture a period in time: its character's and its subplots"/"devices" being either deeper (representing something/someone more generic), or being empty (just a way to kill time or build a character in a way that is unimportant to the "deeper meaning").

Enjoy the movie. Just be aware of what to look out for.

I cant believe I just saw this movie with a friend of mine.

Its so horrible, I wonder how can anyone comment it as recommended? This moes IMDb score should not be more than 1. Complete waste of time.

This is my first comment on IMDb, and m being forced to type these extra lines evn though its hard for me to find words to describe this movie. This movie is trash. This movie takes you nowhere. This movie lacks a story and plot.

Bore.

Bore.Bore.

Bore.Bore.

Bore.

I won't waste your time with a long review. Let's just say I figured out the ending to the movie about five minutes into it. I knew what was going to happen, why it was going to happen, and had a good idea of how it was going to happen. This movie will drag you through repeated nonsense. It beats a dead horse over and over. Then the credits roll. Save yourself time and money and watch something else. If you want to watch an interesting business or market movie, watch Wall Street or even Boiler Room. Don't waste your time here.

I now see that I need ten lines in order to have a valid review. Here are my ninth and tenth lines. Josh Hartnett should stick to acting, NOT producing movies.

This is a well-crafted and well-acted psychological drama, telling the story of a dysfunctional family and of a young man who is intelligent enough to become really, really stupid. It is also an astute analysis of a financial system in crisis, mired in some of the most egregiously vapid speculation this side of the Dutch Tulip Craze. In this movie there are bubbles bursting all over the place, from the personal level to the societal.

Still, the ending leaves a lot to be desired - it could have been a great deal sharper.

There is an area where the movie, for all its qualities, falls down badly and that is the use of rhetoric. (I'm using the term loosely.) The young CEO Tom is supposed to be a supreme salesperson, also a supreme bullsh.tter, capable of swaying even the most recalcitrant business partner or client. In fact the words coming out of his mouth aren't all that convincing ; they're not even all that interesting. It's a pretty safe bet that there are falling- down drunk conversations going on in bars right now which contain more invitation or offer more wit and perception.

This becomes very clear in the scene where Tom addresses a reunion as a speaker. The sentences coming out of his mouth are basically badly strung together gobbledygook ; and yet his audience listens raptly, as if Churchill himself was giving one of his most rousing and engaging wartime speeches. Credible it is not.

I do understand the markets, I'm studying IT in business right now, and I happened to see this movie. Most of it was like watching paint dry. How the casting director scored Rip Torn and David Bowie is beyond me. The movie is much like a .com company - all hype and no substance. I can just see the guy pitching his scrip right now to the VC's - he probably used that same material when doing the same scene in the movie. This movie rely's heavily on the F-bomb to make its point about businesses - or the lack of sense in business. It could have used witty dialog instead... There are some diamonds in this rough though - when David Bowie tell's you he doesn't like the way you've been handling your personal life, you know you've hit rock bottom!

the detractors of this movie kept looking for a beginning - middle - and end to this story (in my opinion). that's not what it's about! the story continues today.

after watching this story i was most taken by the mystery of it all. it starts then ends and the in-between comes across as vacuous and self indulgent - and isn't that what the dot com bubble was all about? no where in the entire film is "Landshark" actually explained as to what it does. the developers do not really explain it and above all the employees seem lost as to exactly what their duties are!! and in that is the clue to this movie.

it's about the grasp for fortune & fame built on a foundation that no one really understood - the internet! a quick road to cash as long as you presented yourself as if you knew what you are talking about easy cash came your way. even the elderly David bowie character fell for it but didn't care for the hartnett characters lifestyle. appearance is everything substance doesn't count.

i liked this flick and will watch it again! beautifully photographed and acted - it's a thinking persons movie so don't expect the story to be handed to you.

Anyone who thinks that Josh Hartnett isn't a true movie star should see his riveting, high-wire performance in 'August', a shrewdly dramatized look back at the bursting of the dot-com bubble. As Tom, the hipster CEO of a start-up that's about to crash and burn, Hartnett has a scruffy glamour worthy of Brad Pitt, as well as a whiplash gift-of-gab intensity all his own. Tom knows he's running on fumes, and director, Austin Chick, and screenwriter, Howard A. Rodman, use the summer of 2001 to comment on a culture that is still lethally leveraged. This is an indie 'Wall Street' for the Internet era of virtual-profit hucksterism.

Maybe because I was 14 in August of 2001 is the reason I have no clue what this movie is about. I have no clue what their company is or does. I'm not very familiar with stock market either, but I do know enough to get the basics but I was still lost. The acting was okay but I just don't think it's a plot that will reach many people. Then again it's an Indie film and not meant to be a blockbuster. I have watched other movies based on stocks or finance and understood them perfectly so maybe it's really a time period movie. This movie will probably resonate better with people who were aware of the dot com explosion and then downfall.