Freedom Downtime (2001)

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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!!

This is an interesting documentary about a subject that is often ignored - the court's and police's lack of knowledge about anything connected to a network, and medias habit of twisting or ignoring facts when they see they can make more money. As a non-American, there are some things that I don't get, but over all the film is very good at telling us how things work, and in my country (Sweden), the events in this film might get another point of view, since the police raid on the pirate bay in April 2006, where many things got eerily similar to what happened to Mitnick.In a film making point of view Freedom Downtime is lacking though, the editing could be better, and the sound mixing got some flaws (but I must say it was a long time since I saw the film, so I could remember incorrectly). Still, this is a must see for anyone interested in the hacker community, or the odd behaviour of the "justice".

The simple truth is that the American justice and prison system are run by private corporation and if the government wants to get rid of someone they just hand them over to this system. This movie is about just one person that this has happened too. Unfortunately for Mitnick he was the scapegoat used to pass a lot of laws to protect corporations and allow them to right off a lot of expenses and steal a lot of money by blaming hackers. This is the real message of the movie. Just a simple wake up call to the people.This movie is much more then the story of Mitnick, a computer user at a time when very few people knew how to turn them on. He was used and abused, his life destroyed and his freedom taken away. And the scary truth is most people really didn't care because it was happening to someone else.This is a great movie, funny beyond what you would expect. Informative beyond what it seems, all you have to do is listen to what the "geeks" are saying. It's filled with great REAL characters that will make you laugh out loud.Watch this movie if you want to have a great time and learn more then you would watching a year of Hollywood movies Great job to the cast and crew and the hackers and the geeks ... I loved it

Yes.. You've seen them. "War Games" and "Hackers. You've also heard of them... You;ve heard of him. Kevin Mitnick. The media portrayed him as dangerous, believing he could start a nuclear war if he had access to a payphone. But you havn't heard the true story. And FREEDOM DOWNTIME is just that.I am glad that Emmanuel Goldstein and the crew of 2600 released this film, so it could show the truth of the Kevin Mitnick legacy, and the horror that could have been unleashed by the movie, "Takedown."FREEDOM DOWNTIME is the greatest hacker movie and the greatest documentary I have ever seen. If you have a view on hackers, see this movie.. It is likely to fix it.