It's the early 1990s and Jeff Bezos (Armando Gutierrez) is a successful stock broker in New York City - but reading an article on the internet and its annual 2300% growth rate has him hooked on an idea about the internet's business potential. So why not try and sell books online? The advantage is, not having to rely on a brick-and-mortar store, there is no limit on the number of titles one can sell. The challenge though, it's the early 1990s and nobody yet believes in the internet, nobody sees its possibilities. So basically Jeff has to borrow his first $300,000 to start his business from his parents, has to move from New York to Seattle with his wife MacKenzie (Alex Mitchell) to even afford the kind of place they need for a start-up, has to hire staff (Nick Friedman, Jevon White, Sasha Andreev) fired up enough but also desparate enough to work under almost inhumane conditions for mere pennies. But Bezos doesn't waver, even when Barnes & Noble owner Leonard Riggio (Kevin Sorbo) does his best to discourage him - essentially because his company is just in the process of putting independent bookstores out of business. It's much later that Riggio does a 360 and tries to buy Bezos's company before it goes live - but that's only encouragement for Bezos to stay on course, and it's not long from there before amazon.com goes live and receives its first order ...

It's almost unthinkable now but there was a time, not even 30 years ago, when Amazon wasn't yet a household name - heck, the whole internet wasn't yet a household name. So in that respect, this film is a very welcome trip down memory lane, and its very factual approach uncovers many lesser-known facts about what has become the biggest online retailer. As intersting as all of this is, this matter-of-factly approach also has its downside, namely there's no real central conflict to this movie, it just seems like a straight journey from a to b, with all obstacles quickly overcome along the way but neither climax nor resolution, not even a proper finale - so no, this film is by no means a perfect narrative feature ... but one can't denie the sense of instant nostalgia the film invokes in one, which makes it a pretty good watch nevertheless.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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