The workings of Landshark are much closer to a bunch of grade schoolers playing business. In perhaps the most telling scenes of the childishness of the characters, a scene which is obnoxiously intentional, Tom and Josh meet at a strip club, but rather than stare at breasts, they’d rather play pinball. The closing scene of the film has the two actors returning to the pinball machine, fighting over who gets the next game.
The premise of August is marginally interesting, if for nothing else than it occurs with the shadow of 9/11 hanging over it and could make some interesting points about overeager tech investors. The problem occurs within the fundamental execution of this premise. August would have been much better, or at least competent, if it was called March-August, focusing on the rise and fall of a tech company with a little too much hubris. In its actual form, Landshark is doomed from the start, and you spend the entire film knowing it's going to crumble, if not before 9/11, then after.
If the film wins any Razzies, which it certainly could, I’d like to propose a new category for which it would be a lock: Most Gratuitous Use of David Bowie. Bowie plays Cyrus Ogilvie, something of a gender-bending Mr. Burns, who eventually takes over Landshark and buys Tom out. Bowie, along with Rip Torn as Tom’s Yosemite Sam-resembling father, is at least in touch enough to play the role with a level of camp silliness reflective of the silliness of the film. There may be some intended significance to Tom being the only one to cash out before 9/11, considering that Ogilvie’s office is located in the World Trade Center. Yet the film is too incoherent to make that point, and considering that Tom is bought out at 15% of market value of a stock that’s already under a dollar per share, morality is insignificant anyway.
The film's allusions to Marshall McLuhan and Un Chien Andalou seems like its filmmakers were going, “Look at us! We're cultured!” Rodman, a professor at USC, should know better than to tell rather than show. His previous screenplay was the recently released Savage Grace, which received mediocre reviews, but was based on a much better book with a lot of quality source material to work with. He seems lost on his own. Equally lost are director Austin Chick and especially editor Pete Beaudreau, who have included multiple scenes that agonizingly extend for minutes too long and ultimately go nowhere. The filmmakers are just as childish and amateur as Tom and Josh themselves.
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1 - Lisa McKay
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