• by Tom Siebert , Op-Ed Contributor, September 30, 2010

Director David Fincher's deft, ambitious and highly entertaining docudrama "The Social Network" opens with Harvard computer nerd and fledgling Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg being called an asshole by the pretty coed who is about to become his ex-girlfriend. He spends the rest of the movie proving it. The end.

OK, so that's snide and simplistic, but it's also pretty much the core of this story (from a dialogue-rich script by Aaron Sorkin), which is far more interested in Facebook's creator, and the sprawling cast of real-life characters who helped Zuckerberg (willingly or not) produce Facebook, than it is in Facebook itself.

And that's the amazing bait-and-switch the movie masterfully pulls off. "The Social Network" positions itself as a piece of immediate, essential, zeitgeist-tapping entertainment product. What it delivers, instead, is much more timeless: an iconic story of the rise to power, wealth and influence of one obsessively driven man, and the trail of bodies he (figuratively) leaves in his wake.You know, ye olde biblical conundrum, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?"

Not that Zuckerberg, who is played with chilly and chilling confidence by Jesse Eisenberg, had that much soul to begin with, according to "The Social Network." Paced like an action movie, shot in dark film noir style ("Se7en" goes to Harvard!), and skillfully unfolding in long flashbacks intercut with dueling depositions during a pair of lawsuits, the film convincingly makes a case that Zuckerberg's creativity is fueled by two massive chips on his shoulder: girls and the undeserving rich.

The opening sequence breakup ignites an angry Zuckerberg into building a snarky Web site that compares campus coeds' hotness. It gets the Z-man in trouble, but it also catches the attention of a pair of Ivy League blue bloods, identical twins (both played distinctively by Armie Hammer) who hire him to design a social networking site for Harvard. Instead, Zuckerberg creates his own, and both he and the film are off to the races, as the Web site experiences immediately explosive growth and everybody makes a play to get a piece of it.

Early on, while Zuckerberg is still the underdog, it's easy to root for him even if he is an asshole. He's smart. He's clever. He's funny. He's anti-establishment. He's clearly an outsider, has always been one, and you don't blame him for not trusting anybody. But when he heads out to California, seduced by the grandiose suavity of Napster's creator Sean Parker and promises of riches beyond imagination, he's a goner.

As good as Eisenberg (and the entire cast, for that matter) is, it's Justin Timberlake as Parker who threatens to walk away with the movie. While "The Social Network" sees Zuckerberg as a fascinating but bitter nerd with cutthroat capitalistic instincts, it treats the charismatic, hard-partying, coke-snorting, teen-bedding Parker like a rock star -- the Justin Timberlake of the 'net, you could suppose.

Parker is the smooth-talking devil who details Facebook's billion-dollar potential before Zuckerberg's adoring eyes, and it's to the film's credit that he comes off not as villain but as ambiguous instigator: a lot of what he says makes sense, and he's clearly passionate about the Internet's ability to unify and bring people together -- far more so than Zuckerberg, who instead sees it as a tool for his own glorification.

My favorite scene in the film, though, doesn't involve either of them. Instead, it takes place in the Harvard Dean's office, when the golden boy twins beseech then-Dean (and former Treasury Secretary) Larry Summers for upper-crust justice for Zuckerberg's theft of their idea. They're painfully deluded, while Summers is an insufferable know-it-all blowhard who blithely dismisses Facebook as a flash in the pan; the film neatly summarizes in a nutshell how the Internet levels the playing field while skewering the old guard.

The last portion of the film is by far the weakest, as Z's former best friend CFO, and worst betrayal, gets more and more screen time, and an attractive lawyer drops clunker dialogue trying to convince us that Zuckerberg's not really an asshole, "just trying so hard to be one." Not so brilliant insight: If you're trying so hard to be an asshole, you're almost guaranteed to succeed.

But there haven't been a lot of great movies about business featuring nice guys. The business movies that stick are about the assholes, the Charles Foster Kanes, the Gordon Gekkos, the Daniel Plainviews. But those guys were all fictional; Zuckerberg's the real deal. And so is "The Social Network."