STORYLINE: A thorough and unvarnished analysis of Elon Musk, a technology billionaire who serves as the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter.  (IMDb)

  Matthew Broderick played a game of wits against artificial intelligence in the motion picture WarGames (1983).   In 2010, the creation of Facebook was the topic of the drama The Social Network.   Google was the talk of the town in the comedy The Interbshio (2013), starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn.  The new documentary, Musk, puts tech titan Elon Musk front center, for a  detailed look into the controversial figure.

  There are a lot of films that push the envelop, with lengthy runtimes. The classic, Gone With the Wind (1939) clocks in near the four hour maker.  Some of the Harry Potter films are around two and a half hours.  Even You Can See Everything, a documentary I recently raved about, was minutes shy of three hours. Musk is nearly four hours, and comes with an intermission.

  How does the documentary fill it’s time?  It’s an unflattering deep dive into who Elon Musk is.  This is a far cry from a fluff piece feature. In fact, there is an argument that the film is slanted in the opposite direction.

  Musk features news stories, and interviews about his rise to tech glory. It follows his trajectories at Tesla, Space X, as well as his Twitter take over. The film goes into his work with Doge.  Intertwined are interviews with the professional stories and interviews, are interviews with folks from his personal life. All this designed to give the viewer a 360 look at who Elon Musk is, as an individual.

  In the opening moments of the motion picture the filmmakers discuss how they wanted Musk to participate in the movie, and how he seemed open to participating.  When arranging to be interviewed, it appeared like he ghosted them.  Through some bit of creativity, his presence is captured throughout the documentary.  Without giving anything away, I found it to be a creative approach to solving the filmmaker‘s problem.

A lot of the behind the scenes, of each of his companies, such as Tesla and Space X, we’re both frustrating and fascinating.  It was fascinating to watch the creative genius at work, but frustrating to see the harm and abuse the companies were unleashing, on the world.

The film goes into his personal life, and get uncomfortable at times.  It seems to go a bit to fat every now and then, but the subject of the film is a very controversial public figure.  The documentary should not, nor does it shy away from controversy. This is a sign of a good documentary, for me.

  To give credit or credit is due, the film does show what a brilliant idea Elon Musk have, it the tech world.  It shows his drive and ambition.

  Musk is a four hour long motion picture that uses its time well, to go deep into the subject of tech icon Elon Musk.

  Until next time, I will see you at the movies!