The Internet's Own Boy is a powerful indictment of big power, and a heart-rending portrait of a talented, driven individual eventually worn down by the system. Aaron Swartz was a precocious talent with a strong moral core. We all forget how young the Internet is, and how we are still forging the ground in this territory. That journey needs leaders with vision who can take the development in the right direction. Swartz was that leader. To ponder on his potential, on what has been lost by losing him at the tender age of 26, is almost unbearable. "It's not like he was curing cancer" is a clichéd, weary, cynical response at times these days. And as this film shows in its climax, it is a wildly inappropriate comment. This film is both a closely observed portrayal of one remarkable individual, and a mirror to our morally-skewed times. Unmissable.
