August (2008) Synopsis:
Drama will tell of two brothers trying to keep their company afloat in Wall Street in the days leading up to 9/11.
August (2008) Movie Review:
August is director Austin Chick’s (XX/XY) sophomore film that centers around two brothers struggle to uphold their dot.com start up company while living the American dream in New York City one month before the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
The film had something to work with, as Chick is an applicable filmmaker. However, August is dreadfully boring and moves at a snails pace with lots of talkative scenes and hardly any clarification on presented elements. The film premiered last January at the Sundance Film Festival.
Tom (Josh Harnett) and Joshua (Adam Scott) Sterling are two brothers that created a very successful Internet start-up company called Landshark. Tom is the laid back and unprofessional one that has a great way of marketing and selling the company to very wealthy investors and customers. Joshua on the other hand is the actual genius behind the company that is not credited and centers his life around his wife (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and new-born baby. Tom on the other hand likes the night life, is always late, and cannot maintain a healthy relationship with anyone, including his parents (Rip Torn and Caroline Lagerfelt). After ample amounts of success with Landshark, the company is hitting rock bottom with its stock dropping and assets being frozen. Joshua as well as the other two members of Landshark’s management staff (Robin Tunney and Andre Royo) expressed concern to Tom, but he shrugs it off believing that they will turn it around. The reality is that the company will fold, and Tom just does not want to accept it. He attempts to find peace by reconnecting with his ex-girlfriend Sarrah (Naomie Harris), who is an architect. As the days go by, the company continues to crumple, and leads to the two brothers on a journey of heartache and a candid outcome of striving for survival in the dot.com world.
Chick shoots with a gritty camera and a lot of the film takes place at night to contribute to the dreary mood of the characters. As mentioned previously, August is really a talk fest film that has characters raising their voices on an occasion, but the film just barely moves from scene to scene. The outcome of the film is satisfying, but audience will yearn for more and for many of their questions to be answered. This could fall on Howard A. Rodman’s script, in which what Landshark actually does as a company is never revealed. This decision could have been intentional as a blinding technique or not, it just is not answered. The character interactions also do not always seem clear either, such as why is this character out of nowhere yelling. The overall script seems to reflect the viewer to already be very knowledgeable in e-commerce, the stock market, and overall business in nature, and ignores in depth to these important elements of the story and the characters.
Josh Hartnett’s character of Tom has the most depth, but the way he plays the role is typical of his acting skills, which are moderate at best. Adam Scott does not have much to work with at all as the other brother Joshua, nor does Naomie Harris as Tom’s ex-girlfriend, who just arrived back in New York City from Spain. Rip Torn plays the two brothers old-school father in some of the best scenes, and it is refreshing to see David Bowie pop up at the end of the film as a powerful businessman named Cyrus Ogilvie.
August is a film that just drags along and offers nothing really commendable for audiences. This is a film that has had trouble finding distribution, despite its notable cast and including a pretty good director like Austin Chick. However, August has just received a limited theatrical release date of July 11th, 2008.
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August (2008) review written by: Bailey Henderson
7th September, 2008 
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