August (2008)

Image credit: Jessica Miglio

DOT-COMMAND Josh Hartnett gives off movie-star heat in August, an indie Wall Street for Internet boomers

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 the director, Austin Chick, and the screenwriter, Howard A. Rodman, use the summer of 2001 to comment on a culture that is still lethally leveraged. They've made an indie Wall Street for the Internet era of virtual-profit hucksterism. A-