joyjohnnickname This movie is basically about 5 people arguing about what happens AFTER proving that P=NP. In my opinion it becomes a tad ridiculous after a point. Even though they are "some of the smartest people on earth" and they have been working on this problem for years, they keep trying to convince and astonish each other by yelling fundamentals of theory of computation in an overdramatized tone. I also found really disappointing the fact that they showed nothing about the problem and how one would work to solve this. Of course I wouldn't expect to get into details about the proof since such thing doesn't exist ( :P ), but I would expect them to describe the problem in a better, more detailed way than comparing it to a card trick or to searching a coin buried in the desert. I guess it was a decent effort though and I like the fact that I watched a movie which is even remotely connected to this fascinating problem.

Chris The movie revolves around perhaps the greatest problem in computer science P vs. NP. Most things we rely on in the world, assume that P is not equal to NP -- that creating a code is way easier than cracking it, that figuring out whether a cure for cancer is effective is way easier than finding the cure in the first place. Traveling Salesman doesn't analyze the problem. Instead, it asks, what if P == NP? In other words, what if codes are just as easy to crack as they are to create? What if finding a cure for cancer is just as easy as showing a cure you've found works. Most scientists today don't believe this is true, but it has not yet been proved, which makes for an interesting, what if it's true discussion.The dialog is good, exploring the ramifications of a P == NP world. Somehow, it left me wanting more.

Gordon5136 The first 3/4 of this low-budget film may appeal to mathematics and computer science nerds, but to an outsider, it is mainly a bunch of mathematicians standing/sitting around talking their specialized vernacular about some important mathematical breakthrough that could have astounding impact on humanity. As storytelling techniques go, this one was weak in my opinion: it didn't seem very well written and directed. I'm not just saying that just because there was no action at all—just dialogue. I'm saying there were a number of weaknesses: there was no hook to make me want to watch the whole thing (I had to force myself to stay with it), and there was no significant character arc to it. In fact I wasn't really sure who the protagonist was and who the antagonist was. I have to presume they were respectively all the mathematicians on the team versus the government. The actors were good and did their best to not let the film completely implode from countless blasé pages of script.I gather these persons recruited to work on the project must have felt somewhat akin to what the Manhattan Project team felt: excited, optimistic and patriotic about their objectives at first, but later pondering what hell they might very well be unleashing on the world. Toward the end of the film, it starts to get a little interesting and tense—a little! The implications and the risks of success become a little more apparent. But I had to force myself to wade through about an hour of boring static scenes filled with meaningless (to myself, as a non-mathematician) and seemingly endless lingo. Not really very interesting or compelling overall. I forced myself to watch the whole thing, hoping there would be an astonishing climax. It's not one of those "I want eighty minutes of my life back" films, but none-the-less, I cannot recommend it to friends as a good movie to watch.

patrick-and-thompson Far from being a "smart" movie like many reviewers here praise it, this movie is written by people playing make believe with characters who are suppose to be far more intelligent than the writers can claim to be. As a result, the dialogue is laughable. I've literally never seen a movie try SO HARD to be edgy and smart and yet be so vague and shallow. The characters in this movie are don't resemble real people, especially not top mathematicians and computer scientists. They're a fantasy of the creators who pretend that they know what it's like to be really super duper smart and work on something really super duper important. So we get a collection of vague, generic, shallow musings of the type that non-geniuses apparently think geniuses spend their time thinking about. And the characters always talk as if the audience is in the room but can't be let in on the secret. Just speak directly about what you're talking about instead of making indirect references to everything. But okay, that's not nearly as edgy and smart so we can't have that right guys? The pretentiousness is overbearing. Not to mention the occasional blatantly incorrect reference or analogy (demonstrating that the writers don't really understand the problem well enough, which makes me wonder why they're so caught up trying to make super smart and deep dialogue about a problem they don't understand?). Stop trying so hard, people. And let's stop making absurd caricatures of math genius.