Travelling Salesman, Thriller Set In a World Where P=NP

mikejuk writes with this excerpt from I Programmer: "A movie that features science and technology is always welcome, but is it not often we have one that focuses on computer science. Travelling Salesman is just such a rare movie. As you can guess from its name, it is about the Travelling Salesman problem, more precisely about the P=NP question. Written and directed by Timothy Lanzone, and produced by Fretboard Pictures, it should premiere on June 16. As the blurb to the movie trailer says: 'Travelling Salesman is an intellectual thriller about four of the world's smartest mathematicians hired by the U.S. government to solve the most elusive problem in computer science history — P vs. NP. The four have jointly created a "system" which could be the next major advancement for humanity or the downfall of society.'"

Re:How come everyone in the movie is white?

[Surt]

Intelligence is largely controlled by early childhood educational opportunity, so it would be unsurprising if the 4 smartest were white.

Goose bumps, again?

[G3ckoG33k]

I loved Pi!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704/ [imdb.com]

for those who missed it

Re:How come everyone in the movie is white?

[NoSleepDemon]

This really annoys me. You can't accept that they're white by chance? As in, they just happened to cast those actors? Having worked in the advertising industry (shudder) I can tell you how MADDENING it is when you've got a bunch of really good takes or photographs but you've got to discard them because you've been told by some bleeding heart retard that you need that one minority in there, who just so happens cannot pose in front of a camera to save their life. This leads to lots of post processing and other dicking around just to appease people like you, not to mention the subtle racism of including a single minority there in the first place. A great example: any number of car ads where the entire family is white and there's a token black boy in the backseat. Why yes that makes complete sense! Why not make the whole family black instead? Oh no, that would be *too many* minorities, they're called minorities for a reason afterall!

Re:How come everyone in the movie is white?

[Culture20]

Your question is irrelevant since it didn't happen that way. The movie was filmed in a country that claims to be a melting pot and yet the "4 smartest ppl in the world" are a bunch of skinny white guys.

You're talking about an extremely small set. Let's reduce it further to just one: "The smartest person in the world". Now are you going to be upset if this person isn't representative of every culture?

Well, that looks pretty awful

[jfengel]

The P=NP aspect is just geekiness. You didn't solve it, and the movie had better not be about solving it. That would be stupid.

You can, however, make a thriller using that as a MacGuffin. The better you know the math, the more rich-sounding the dialogue around the MacGuffin will be, but it must remain a MacGuffin. It's the Lost Ark from Raiders, or the Maltese Falcon. Either is a fine thriller, with interesting characters and snappy dialogue.

You never want to read too much into a trailer, but I'm not seeing much of either of those here. It put way too much on its surface: the blue wash to look cold, the deep dissonant chords on the piano, the "oh my god this is the end of the world" dialogue. I got no sense that I might care about the characters, or that they might do anything interesting or distinctive.

Geeks love a movie where their geekiness gets tickled. Everybody loves a movie about themselves, and getting that aspect right makes the characters feel more real. I'm a geek. But I'm also more than a geek. I'd rather not be patronized, and the one thing I know for certain is that you didn't actually do anything about P=NP. Use it as background for solid performances, deep characterizations, and interesting visual composition, not instead of it.

Maybe I'm wrong. Trailers are often not representative of the movie, and maybe there's good, non-trite dialogue in the rest of it. But I'm not hopeful.