David Fincher's film about the inception of Facebook (and all ensuing lawsuits) has been at cinemas in the US since the beginning of the month and has just had advance screenings over here in England. To put it simply, this film is the best one this year. Better than Shutter Island. Better than Kick-Ass. Better than all the rest. Even better than Inception. And that I thought was impossible.
The two main characters; Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg and Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield are excellent. They are shown to be polar opposites, yet seem to be solid friends, Saverin's cool businessman persona juxtaposed with Zuckerberg's almost Asperger's personality fit together well.
In fact, Garfield is so good as Saverin that I'm watching the new Spiderman films, purely to see him act again. Eisenberg's next few films will be under massive scrutiny, due to his huge performance in this film.
The opening scene in the 'Thirsty Scholar Pub' is so archetypal of Aaron Sorkin's work, even people who had no idea he had written the screenplay, adapting it from Ben Mezrich's 2009 nonfiction book The Accidental Billionaires, would have most definitely guessed that he something to do with it. It also heralds to the conversations that can be heard on 'Gilmore Girls'. The way in which Eisenberg seems to squeeze four sentences worth of words into the time that any normal person says one sentence, seems to fit the character of Zuckerberg perfectly. The ability to seem to talk to himself because he spouting out any single thought he has. Great physical representation of his personality. No one would actually noticed all that about that opening scene, just someone whose media consumption has been ruined by Media and Film Studies and the necessity to over analyse everything to the moon and back.
Overall, the film shows Zuckerberg in a wholly negative light, that much is obvious due to the film's focus of the man's lawsuits from separate parties regarding Facebook. Throughout the film, I grew ever more aware of the necessity to ram the fact that this film's execs seem to think he is a bad person. Might have something to do with the fact that Saverin was the key consultant that the author used for information. Might not. However, there were glimpses of actual niceness from the lead, that I wanted to see more of. It made him more accessible as an actual person. Not just this all powerful entity who has seemingly entered our lives, 500 million of us. On the flip side, Saverin is supposed to be shown as the victim in this story, through many careful construed moments that make him seem unlucky (enter more negatives here). The cynicism within me thinks that no one in this film is actually like this in real life, the only person I wish was, would be Zuckerberg because I love his whole personality, seems to have a insanely dry sense of humour. Perfect. And he blogs, there is hope for all of us.
I have heard people say that the film doesn't really go anywhere. This is how every single thing that Sorkin has done works; you've got to know what you're getting yourself into. it's not a action packed heart stopping thriller, its full of clever dialogue that draws you into the story, but always keeps you away enough. This is due to the fact that no one has the patience to listen to a whole conversation, luckily there is no need to know every single word.
Also, Justin Timberlake plays Sean Parker, the entrepreneur who founded Napster, the free music sharing website. This casting has been seen by many as quite surprising, the ability to use his celebrity persona and use it to both catalyse the amount of hype about the film and also see himself in his character in some instances, he definitely deserves the process that has been heaped on him for this performance. The words 'revelation' and 'superb' have been banding about on the forum for weeks.
Fincher, also known for films such as Aliens 3 and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, has perhaps pulled off one of the great CGI moments. The 'Winklevii' are both played by Armie Hammer, of 'Reaper' fame. This is done by superimposing his face, seamlessly I may add, on to a body double by the name of Josh Pence. I didn't even notice it until I was reading the credits when walking out of the cinema.

Also, being of a certain age, it was just too weird seeing Brenda Song (The Suite Life of Zack & Cody) and Malese Jow (Unfabolous) in grown up roles for once, but that's just getting older I suppose.
A moment should be taken to talk about David Fincher, the director. The bloke hasn't made a bad film in the whole of his feature film. Okay, Aliens 3 wasn't an epic and Panic Room was pretty average, but definitely no turkeys in his filmography for sure.

You can work out how good something is by the amount of times that you can quote it in a conversation. The writing of this film serves up many opportunities for quotations. There are way too many to name on here, but trust me. Big up, Aaron Sorkin.
To put a story quite short, this film is amazing and needs to be seen by everyone, and because its about Facebook it will be seen by absolutely everyone, no doubting it. I'm not at all surprised that The Social Network is being seriously talked about for next year's Oscars.

Believe the hype.