It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The documentary centers on the fate of Mitnick, who is claimed to have been misrepresented in the feature film Takedown (2000) produced by Miramax and adapted from the book by the same name by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff, which is based on disputed events. The film also documents a number of computer enthusiasts who drive across the United States searching for Miramax representatives and demonstrating their discontent with certain aspects of the bootleg script of Takedown they had acquired. Several notable and iconic figures from the hacking community appear in the movie, including Phiber Optik (Mark Abene), Bernie S (Ed Cummings), Alex Kasper, and (director) Emmanuel Goldstein (Eric Corley). Freedom Downtime tries to communicate a different view of the hacker community from that usually shown by the mainstream media, with hackers being depicted as curious people who rarely intend to cause damage, driven by a desire to explore and conduct pranks.

One has to wonder, after seeing a documentary such as this, if the ideas in the film were more important than its quality. The thing is every movie is propaganda: if they were artistic expression of creative people they wouldn't all look the same. Most people are not actually paying for truth and they are not paying for art, instead they are only looking for validation of their own concepts and ideas.That is why I find it difficult to comment on a film like Freedom Downtime. On one hand I totally believe Kevin Mitnick and a lot of hackers to have been mistreated and witch hunted by governments and the American one in particular. On the other hand it is hard to take seriously a documentary that is almost completely one-sided, like Michael Moore's stuff.The entire premise of the film is that Kevin's friends talk freely to Emmanuel Goldstein, while corporations, government agencies and hostile witnesses and agitators in the Mitnick case refuse to cooperate. But I can't possibly buy that. They accidentally met two friendly lawyers during the making of the film; I am sure they could have made a whole lot more trying to tackle the problem legally and diplomatically. A high profile case like that should have attracted a lot of legal vultures. But instead the makers of the film went out of their way to show how unfair they were treated and thrown out from every place they were trying to get to. So did Moore, if you remember his movies, and they were of the same format: sticking it to people and then complaining they were not taken seriously, then showing only the producer's point of view.I have read Mitnick's book, which is much more open and moderate, and it had a whole lot much of an effect on me. This film is two hours long and it very rarely actually discloses facts. Probably Wikipedia's page is more informative than this documentary. I had the impression it told more about Bernie S. than about Kevin Mitnick, so clearly something was off. There is an interview with Mitnick bundled with the film, but it is so badly made that I have to ask myself if Goldstein wanted to discredit Kevin. They feed him energizers and then let him blow off steam on record. The poor guy is so enraged and traumatized by his experience that he can barely express himself.Anyway, to summarize: I really empathize with Mitnick's plight and the point of view of the authors of the film, but I don't think the film was very good. The purpose of such a production is to show a point of view in a way that brings more people to it, in a way that makes people believe the point. People that are in the field and have every reason to already believe what is in the film have no need to see it, while people who don't have very little chance to connect to anything Freedom Downtime has to offer. As such, it failed and was probably more of an ego trip for Goldstein and his crew.I can't stop fearing, though, that I am having the same reaction the legal system in the US had about Mitnick: if the defense lawyer is not highly skilled and highly paid, probably Kevin is guilty; if the film is low budget and made by amateurs, then its message is probably not good.

First, I would like to mention that I love documentaries, especially the ones concerning the world of computers. But I was really disappointed, this is not a good doc and by far!Seriously, this movie look like a bunch of teens not even prepared for the interviews, a pointless roadtrip to companies (ones that pursue Mitnick) where they cant speak to even the receptionist.I was really disappointed, it was like Micheal Moores of the poors kind of doc... In the positive side, some key facts about the lacks of evidence of system justice for pursuing Mitnick.See Hackers Wanted instead!!

I thought America was supposed to be this free country that grants rights to their citizens. What a joke. It's funny to me to see all the foreign comments saying it's shocking. If anyone here has been through the legal process in this country especially for a felony, this movie isn't probably very shocking to them. When the police pick your name from the hat, you are not going to walk away clean. Unless you have very deep pockets of course, then you have about a 30% chance of winning your case. A big chunk your money will go towards posting bail so you don't have to sit in county jail for several months until the D.A. actually looks at your file. Even if you don't post bail, do the time til your case is heard, and win. You just sat in jail with mostly crackdealers and crackheads if you're in a major city like I was, and you can't win a lawsuit for wrongful imprisonment and lost wages because that's just what the system is. Not to mention the original charge(s) will still pop up in background checks about 75% of the time. Get a charge exponged off your record and you'll still have the same odds of it popping up. Trust me, it's happened to me and just about everybody I know with felonies. My advice is be smart about your crimes. I would say be good and don't commit any but the fact is everybody in America is going to commit at least a crime or two in their lifetime, some by accident. If you get caught and are looking at a lot of jail/prison time, run your ass off! Say you get caught on the run, the court process takes so long that by the time trial starts, they could care less if you ran or turned yourself in. They just want you to accept a plea so they don't have to invest time and money into convicting you because that's all it is, it's a business.