In New York, Vincent and Anton are part of the high stakes game of High Frequency Trading and devise a plan to build a new cable in a straight line from Kansas to New Jersey making them millions in the process. But everything does not go to plan . . .
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I watched this film totally blind, meaning that I did not know anything about it at all. Sometimes that works out very well and other times it does not work out the best. I guess this one was very balanced in terms of love and hate. I just found myself a little bored at times, which is not how you want to feel when watching a film. I don't think it helped getting to the end and finding out it was totally fictional, as it does feel like it could have been based on real events. Mainly because some of it was utterly ridiculous.
A film which was around a new network being developed and seeing plenty of different things around the drills and the line being placed. Offering people money if they just happened to live where they wanted and needed the line to go through. They needed the line to be straight so they could make it the fastest option. This was where Vincent was relying on his cousin Anton to really come up with a way to ensure they could knock a millisecond off the speed. While that may not sound like a massive amount of time in the high stakes trading world that millisecond is the difference between millions of dollars.
The main problem the pair has is how they left the jobs they had been working in for Eva Torres. As she assumes they are up to something and a somewhat war breaks out as she tries to stop them by any means possible. Throw in with this the illness for Vincent and Anton struggling with many issues and engaging socially with his family.
Performance wise I thought Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard were engaging enough and worked very well together. This is the first role I have seen Skarsgard go for the ugly look, in terms of not using his good looks to get him through showing that he does have some very impressive acting ability. Something this film confirms is that I really do not like Salma Hayek but this has been backed up with this performance, I just find her very irritating and probably didn't help me like this film at all.
I would guess that this really did try and raise awareness of this online and crazy world where money is changed hands depending on the quickest connection of people who can then trade off shares. I guess it shows just how crazy wall street still is but in a slightly different way to years ago.
