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.
Review of August
