Travelling Salesman (2012) User Reviews

very interesting and realistic topic well articulated (if you understand what it's talking about)

[vdmsss · 7/10 · 14 September 2013]

This film is about a four theoretical computer scientists who have just proved the conjecture P=NP in the context of a classified research project funded by NSA, DHS and the like. Such a discovery (which incidentally and just to pacify you is not believed possible) would have an enormous impact on our current digital world, in particular would make cryptography breakable and -therefore- terminally undermine the very foundations of any form of security and privacy on the Internet. The entire spectrum of consequences is hard to predict and, surely, in "capable" hands such knowledge would be quite a powerful weapon. This is rendered well in the film, as is the ensuing conscience struggle for the scientist: to comply with the government's demand of absolute silence, or make the result public at the risk of being branded as traitors?

When (s)he says that this film attempts to present a certain "travelling salesman problem" as if everything else depended on it, I suggest user "qqwe qweetr" does not understand what (s)he is talking about. Indeed the situation depicted by the film is plausible, even possible (though extremely unlikely), the screenplay and the dialogues are competent, and the whole package is intriguing if you understand the context. Given that, the film is not a particular good piece of cinema, sounds a lot like a theatrical piece, and surely most details (and therefore of the plot) will go over the head of the typical viewer. However, for a film made with $10,000 this is quite an achievement. Chapeau!

Much less than I expected

[joyjohnnickname · 6/10 · 23 August 2017]

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.

Not much on the technical side !!!

[thethakuri · 5/10 · 15 September 2013]

I recently took a course offered by Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck @ Coursera called "Discrete Optimization." The course was about solving the NP Complete problems like 'Travelling Salesman', 'Graph Coloring', 'Vehicle Routing', 'Warehouse Locations' and so on. The course was very fascinating and at most challenging. The movie is based on the premises that NP problems, or Non- deterministic Polynomial time problems are not solvable in reasonable time. Even moderately sized such problems might take trillions of years with modern computing power. So, brute-force search is out of the question. For this reason, modern cryptography are based on this assumption. When mathematicians in the movie break this assumption and prove that P = NP, i.e. such problems can actually be solved in polynomial time, there are many implications. There is a moral dilemma that it might be used unethically and also such discoveries shouldn't be locked out and classified. As my professor put it, solving(optimizing) NP problems is the most important challenge that no one has heard about. I am really grateful to this movie for addressing this issue. But other than that, there isn't much for me in it. I was expecting a little more math and knowledge about their non-deterministic processor. But the movie is catered more towards the layman, which is perfectly understandable. Instead of just trivial and heuristic solutions, the movie could have mentioned few complete algorithms just to get some credibility amongst mathematics community. For those of you interested, there is a million dollar Millennium Prize offered by Clay Mathematics Institute for proving if P = NP or P != NP .

Travelling Salesman: Walking the Tightrope of Morality, Math + Science

[poetellect · 12 September 2012]

The University of Pennsylvania's International House hosted the premiere of Timothy Lanzone's exceptional, dynamic, propulsive, timely, genuinely exciting and morally intrepid independent film entitled "Traveling Salesman." Also screened more recently at the NYC International Film Festival, the film is remarkable and evolves along several levels, and with several modalities, all while remaining strictly dialogue-based- no explosions, no graphic sex or (despite one somewhat intense dream-type sequence) violence, no titillating CGI- just strong, compelling, forceful, thought-provoking dialogue. Lanzone both directed and co-wrote the screenplay, a work that can claim direct lineage from the "12 Angry Men" of Reginald Rose and Sidney Lumet, as well as (to a greater or lesser extent) from Darren Aronofsky's groundbreaking "π." Not to mention the subtle homage to Stanley Kubrick.

Lanzone has produced a cogent work of cognitive argument, a script of postulation and instruction, all meandering within and around the concepts of foreign policy, physics, mathematics, and the tangible governing laws of our universe. This is a thinking person's movie, and I believe Lanzone to be one of the most intelligent and gifted young filmmakers working in the television/film industries right now. He is surely amongst the best of his generation. It will be interesting to see what future films he concocts, what festivals into which they achieve entry, and what awards they most surely will win. Like Lanzone's mind, this script is expansive- yet very specifically focused, simultaneously.

How much of our modern capitalist world is not only completely dependent on, but created by, science and technology? How much of that science and technology is predicated on understanding mathematical laws, i.e. the fundamental governing and thus-far-codified algorithms of physics and space? How much will future hot or cold warfare- and is current cold and hot warfare- between nations based solely on the competitive acquisition of mathematical and physical knowledge? The age-old adage being, of course, that knowledge IS power.

The disturbing exploration and answer to these questions, which Lanzone deftly embraces in "Travelling Salesman", is that the entirety, indeed ALL of our world depends upon minds that are able to continually sort through data, see patterns, and form ways of predicting and calculating meaning. Lanzone's script is impressive, perhaps flawless- he references mathematical luminaries such as John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, and G.H. Hardy as if every person in the general population knows exactly what he is talking about- which I loved.

The main import of Lanzone's work is this: how can the United States walk the razor's edge of science in an increasingly cut-throat, competitive world? Where does the line demarking points of no return exist, and how can we be true to what is right, or even know what is right, when knowledge discovered has the power to extrapolate beyond what our imaginations can comprehend?

Dr. Tim Horton- played with subtle and raw mastery by Danny Barclay- is the protagonist of the film, the quintessential genius and best-mathematician-of-his-generation, employed (with others) by the United States government to solve a centuries-old question, to develop an algorithm that I can best describe as a mystic's dream- something that can break all codes, predict, quantify and answer any question- a veritable philosopher's stone of physics. Once we obtain this knowledge, we unleash the equivalent of an atomic bomb in potentialities for future conflict- or unity.

This character gives an award-accepting speech, spliced throughout the film's progression, in which he explicates how science is becoming more and more divisive than unifying- mathematics was once universal, but now it threatens to unlock and unleash powers that have potentials worse than an atomic bomb. This is such an important topic to be explored, not only in this film, but for the general public as well- we are reaching a point in our history as a species where points of no return become more and more depressingly present.

I recently read a journal article detailing Bell's Theorem, a law of quantum physics asserting how objects, once connected, affect each other forever, no matter where they are. It was the Irish physicist John Bell's argument against Bohm's and de Broglie's postulation that "hidden variables" accounted for electrons' non-local, faster-than-the-standard-speed-of-light criterion for entities to be able to affect each other in two separate places. Essentially, inequalities found in laboratory data (this theorem is also referred to as "Bell's Inequality") showed how hidden variables definitely could not fully account for non-local, quantum affectations. There are no "hidden variables." In other words, local realism is false, or at best an outdated explanation mutually exclusive to a transcendent, quantum and always-mysterious reality. Non-localized reversal of effect and cause, Bell's theorem is beautifully counter-intuitive against much of what we learn of western science. This idea that consciousness- an implicate order- transcends our material world is essentially what Lanzone explicates in his fictional mathematician solving the "P = NP" age-old conundrum- the idea that there is a mathematical equation, able to be discovered, that can non-locally act as an oracle, breaking security codes and overwhelming others' ability to cope with or repel such knowledge.

How can we quantify and put a price on such knowledge? How can one nation or entity "own" a universal principal? A mathematical algorithm? A genetic cell line? A genetic sequence? "Travelling Salesman" is a film that one can watch repetitively, each time brainstorming more questions, more conundrums, more fractalizations of the eternal mysteries of life and existence and the evolution of human reasoning. This is the realm of the Best Art Has to Offer. Lanzone is a filmmaker- and artist- to surely watch, and follow. Simply unbelievably excellent filmmaking. This is a film to seek out- and it has earned its well-deserved place in the famous New York International Film Festival. Kudos!

If you understand the conundrum involved, you will probably enjoy it.

[lemon_magic · 7/10 · 16 May 2019]

If you want to get an easy handle on this film, think of "12 Angry Men", only with math and computer science geniuses. The structure is similar - 5 individuals, one room, a heavy discussion about one topic, with most of the group one of side of the issue, trying to convince a lone hold out. (That's oversimplified and not entirely accurate, but that's close).

It takes some very good actors, and some very good film making, to keep a viewer's interest up for something like this, even if the viewer understands the concepts and implications of what's being discussed and what's at stake. (Quick summary: a break through in decryption and search technology that can find and punch through previously trusted data-protection schemes like a hot knife through butter.) I credit the actors and director here with a very good job indeed of working through the exposition heavy script and keeping the energy up, and I credit the screenplay with translating some very chewy IT and math concepts with a minimum of jargon and a serious attempt to accurately convey what's going on.

I liked it. I wasn't especially happy with the ending (I am not sure any ending would have satisfied me), but I liked it. I might even watch it again sometime, just to appreciate the craft and polish that went into what was essentially a stage play put on film.

Like watching paint dry

[Gordon5136 · 1/10 · 30 December 2015]

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.

Talking Heads

[tabuno · 6/10 · 12 January 2019]

15 August 2016. This movie isn't so much about science fiction as it is about the geopolitical implications of a potential breakthrough in mathematics that may have world wide national security implications. The audience is dropped into a conference room with very little introduction and there begins an increasingly hostile discussion regarding national secrets among supposedly some of the brightest mathematicians in the United States and a representative of the government. What transpires is mostly a lot of philosophical and moral dialogue, debate interspersed with a few surrealistic scenes that leave the audience wondering what's going on here.

For the most part, the talking heads discussion is an apt description because most of the discussion appears to mimic to some extent what may have occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis during President Kennedy's administration except with the threat much less imminent. It's hard to get emotional involved in the movie especially with nearly an all male cast, devoid mostly of heart felt emotion and literally mostly focused on rational logic.

The culmination of this movie is perhaps the only real emotional appealing scene, but even so it fails to really capture the angst that so many thrillers have achieved in the past such as Fail Safe (1964), The Good Shepard (2006), Bridge of Spies (2015), Dr. Strangelove (1964), Breach (2007), Transcendence (2014), and The Machine (2013).

Worst movie ever

[mdwalker-55265 · 1/10 · 5 March 2019]

The subject matter is extremely alluring, exciting and something I'd love to see in a new movie. Frankly, watching this movie was like watching a high school students film project from the 1990's. All scenes would have been easier to watch if the editing filters had not of been so oddly adjusted to the point it appeared as another high school student experimental class project. Editing the film in high expose mode, is like listening to an out of tune singer at concert. You try to focus on the lyrics, hoping to understand the song, but all you can focus on is the fact that every out of tune note is hurting your ears. The beginning of the movie jumps from one thing to the other, as if everyone in charge of creating this movie possesses bipolar, ADD or ADHD. Filming recieves a zero. Subject 10. Acting 10.

Interesting in the light of Edward Snowden's revelations...

[CiccioButcher · 8/10 · 17 September 2013]

and beyond. The release date as such (few days have passed since it's available for buying at the movie's website) is spot on.

The movie puts the most emphasis on the philosophy and the moral dilemma of the main characters. Science plays the basic but secondary role as authors can't afford to go deeper into it as science hasn't solved the problem that is solved in this movie and I feel that is the right choice.

In short, a team of four mathematicians has, based on their proof that P=NP, created a machine which can, among many things also break all most commonly used encryption and give the owner huge power in the networked world (overseeing all confidential communication on the internet, bank transaction, breaking into computer systems etc.). As the project was funded by US Govt., they lay right on all results and want to keep those findings classified. Of course, all of the mathematicians understand the short-term ramifications of their finding as well as the dangers of immoral use. They are confronted with a moral dilemma of delivery of the final solution and signing a non-disclosure agreement on all results or opposing the powerful adversary. How would you decide to act in a given situation? The movie is fairly slow into the first 10mins, but the momentum builds up from there on. Acting is very good from all main actors. The only somewhat unconvincing character is the (not so ordinary, mysterious) security officer. The script is troublesome somewhere as some things are left out(context, or sense sometimes as some stuff sound ridiculous) probably on purpose to leave the feeling of something that we couldn't understand as they're talking practically about a proof that has been only constructed imaginary in this movie and whatever they'd reveal about it, it would sound ridiculous as it would not be correct so why not simplify it and just create short fuzzy dialogue in order to keep the movie as tractable and engaging as possible.

Overall: 8/10

More entertaining if you dig the maths...less so if you dig action

[Panglossage · 7/10 · 6 July 2015]

Largely entertaining set piece featuring a taut claustrophobic confrontation between a team of elite mathematicians who've cracked a problem (i.e. The Traveling Salesman) that promises to weaken all cryptographic systems fatally with world-shaking consequences, and the increasingly sinister government bureaucrat alternately badgering then threatening the group to sign lucrative and iron-clad hush agreements.

Torn between the desire for public fame and recognition, and the ethical dilemma that their N=NP proof could represent an information weapon capable of enormous harm, the team led by renowned math prodigy 'No 1', spars verbally with the bureaucrat and each other over whether to sign over their historic achievement and thereby lose all claim to it - and to affect the terrible ways in which it might be used by the government.

This is by no means an 'action' film. Your enjoyment of the film will be directly correlated with your familiarity with the type of cryptographic/NP-complete problem that the team has 'solved', but from which they must now disavow any further knowledge. I rather enjoyed the closing images of No. 1 walking the now-idle railroad track, having symbolically become 'The Traveling Salesman' personified.

The rapid clip arguments, cajoling and very personal threats made over the conference room table are mostly quite good if you keep pace - but I can't help wondering if our intrepid mathematicians realize that whether they sign the non-disclosure agreement or not, the government interest in keeping their discovery absolutely secret makes them all dead men walking?

dreadful

[botfeeder · 2/10 · 18 January 2020]

I hate these narrative movies where the whole movie is guys sitting around talking.

OK, I admit, I only made it 2/3 of the way through before I had enough, but nothing in the last 1/3 could have salvaged it.

It's a movie about some prominent mathematicians who develop a major breakthrough that has all sorts of potential applications. Most of the movie is them sitting around with their government supervisor discussing the project in generalities and also discussing the confidentiality restrictions they must adhere to.

That's it? Yes, that's it. Maybe this review can spare some people 1+ hour of their time.

I had enough time left to try one more movie. I watched Colorless Green, and it was a great antidote.

But I can't let Travelling Salesman go without one more potshot. I strongly suspect that any actual mathematicians would find this movie as ludicrous as i did.

Best dialog I have experienced in years

[karmabandrocks · 10/10 · 27 December 2013]

I believe it is a travesty that this film has such a low score on here. The only thing I can attribute it to is that today's viewers have an attention span of a raccoon trapped in a treasure chest. I suppose the fact that I am a very big fan of this type of film--and what I mean by that is chock full intelligent dialog--may also have something to do with that. There are two other films that have always been in my top 10 favorite films list because of this attribute and they are 12 Angry Men, and The Man From Earth (not to be confused with the man who fell to earth.) Basically a few people trapped in a room for most of the movie discussing a monumental mathematical proof that has huge implications for just about everything and everyone on the planet, and the moral responsibility they have as they are in cahoots with the government through funding. If you have an attention span, love existential and philosophical discussions, or just enjoy movies that make you think then you will love this film as I did. Please help this film get the rating it deserves.

Flat and predicable stereotype Characters

[thewhale-49134 · 4/10 · 13 September 2019]

Interesting situation. Stereotypical characters spouting rhetoric. Quite the movie about 45 minutes in. I would suggestion watching something else. The historical references don't seem correct, just repetitive. Hope this helps others find a more interesting movie.

One Set Movie With a Cop Out Ending

[todd-38769 · 1/10 · 25 August 2020]

Whoever developed the concept for this movie had some great ideas for making money- Hire 5 really good, believable but relatively unknown actors; Shoot the entire movie (except for a few B roll cuts) with all of them in one room; And hire someone off the street to run the camera. The camera is entirely handheld throughout in an apparent attempt to give the movie a realistic / 'now' look but in my opinion they overdid it. It became phony & annoying in the first 5 minutes. I watched the entire movie fully expecting some fascinating revelation at the end. But, although the music got louder, the pacing of the editing quickened & something was set in motion, nothing happened. There was no great meaning or explanation offered & no real ending. It was, in fact, clumsy. If you enjoy listening to bright guys complain & argue about mathematical theories, you might enjoy this. Otherwise, watch something else.

So boring

[karenstinson · 3/10 · 30 March 2020]

This movie was so boring. It was just a bunch of people who think they are smart, sitting in a room talking and being catty like girls. I really didn't like it. I got up and did housework while it was on, just to see if anything actually happened, it didn't. Soo sooo boring. Don't waste your time. I only gave it a 3 because it mentioned math.

Very hard sci-fi

[wikipediacabal · 10/10 · 26 September 2013]

Most of our sci-fi movies and shows use an imaginary world to explore aspects of our present reality like Star Trek (1996, TV), or just as an exciting fantasy, like Star Wars (1977). In print this kind of story is soft sci-fi. Hard sci-fi looks at what could happen in a realistic future after new scientific discoveries, like 2001 (1968). Travelling Salesman is a hard sci-fi story that adds one new discovery to our world and imagines the consequences for the discoverers.

In the movie, four mathematicians confront the US government official who has just overseen their successful breakthrough in math that will enable code breaking of every communication code. The four hope that their work will be made public in order to be applied to many important problems, but the spook makes it clear that their work is top secret and there's to be no negotiation.

One of the four, Dr. Horton, has found a further extension of the work which would allow automated reasoning with virtually no limit, something akin to strong AI. He hasn't included this in the published work perhaps out of fear that the applications would be too dangerous. Horton demands that the work be made public. His fellow nerds don't back him.

Then after an hour of very stimulating thrust and parry, we get a really unfortunate twist ending. You can stop the DVD at 1:10 with 10 minutes left and get a better movie. The spook tells Horton that his whole family will die if he reveals the work. So Horton goes home and reads over the letter from the President. The watermark is an Illuminati pyramid! Realizing... something... he runs a super-virus program that apparently breaks all the computers in the world. The end.

I rate the first hour a 10/10 for those like me who love hard science fiction stories and treasure those few that come along as films. Many audiences won't like it at all. It's not rigorous as far as all the math and terminology (I noticed "SCI classified" and "PSPACE" are not used properly) and a few people who might otherwise be fans will hate that. I studied the real math that the story refers to and that probably helped with my interest in its implications. Viewers should be aware that the film's premise is true, that our current codes could in principle be broken by a scientific breakthrough. The script is all about the ideas and has little interest in characters. It's almost a one-act play as far as staging goes. The final twist is a cheap way to wrap things up.

In 2013 we've learned from Edward Snowden that the US NSA has done much more to crack codes worldwide in the past decade than we had known. The NSA has a history of hiring about half of US mathematicians. If they thought there was a chance of making a breakthrough like the one in the film, they would indeed keep it a secret. We now know that in the 70s the NSA discovered differential cryptography, an attack on the DES crypto system that was not rediscovered in the open literature for 20 years. In short the breakthrough and cover-up in the film is plausible politically and perhaps mathematically.

Those who enjoyed Travelling Salesman should check out Primer (2004). It is a low budget time travel movie with a similar talk-heavy hard sci-fi orientation.

Check the Dr Strangelove homage at 13:20!

Technically accurate, dialog is a bit too vague

[kun-jeremy · 8/10 · 23 September 2013]

As a graduate student in the field of theoretical computer science, I feel that I understand P vs NP as well as the makers of this film could hope for any viewer to understand them. I felt the treatment was more technically accurate than almost any movie I have seen about a mathematical topic, but it still fell short on a few key moments.

Warning, the following contains spoilers.

First, I was confused when they mentioned PSPACE in a few parts of the film. It made it sound like not only had they proved P = NP, but the main character had proved P = PSPACE, and was using this as his back door algorithm. I don't think this was the intent of the movie, but in any case it was a bit confusing.

A second scene puts the main character in his office with a student and his colleague, and he mentions that he has an algorithm that goes on proving theorems and proving more theorems. It is a well known consequence of P = NP that finding mathematical proofs become trivial, for there is an obvious algorithm to check a purported proof in polynomial time. The world's most renowned mathematicians would have known this as well, and it doesn't make sense that it would occur as some kind of "revelation" to the main character and remain a secret he could use as leverage.

Finally, I felt that some of the phrases used to describe general things (like the field of research, which is theoretical computer science or TCS) made the dialog a bit awkward.

That being said, the movie had absolutely palpable dramatic tension. The lines were witty and sharp, the acting was very believable (and the characters actually had distinct personalities). Their power struggles were very exciting to watch. The color was also very well balanced. None of the Hollywood teal and orange crap that has become so standard and ugly.

In all, I enjoyed the movie and the fact that it gave serious consideration to the most important problem in my field (and treated it fairly). My main criticism is that the plot should have more direct clarity. It's nice to leave a lot up to implication. But mathematicians are rarely indirect, and the best lines of the movie were the pointed, thought provoking comment.

A very small, very GOOD movie!

[rlhibdon · 9/10 · 10 February 2015]

What a surprise. An actual intelligent movie. Lately it seems the bigger the movie's budget, the lesser the quality. CGI, and FX have pretty much taken over the sci fi movie biz. Every now and then, a "good" movie comes along. And this is one of them. I had it book marked on Amazon for months, but it just didn't sound interesting. Then late last night, I turned it on. It took me a while to get the feel of it. And I was hooked. I won't go into all the technical stuff; others have done that here.

Some of the best dialogue ever. Smartly written and superbly acted. If you're looking for action, adventure, and excitement, move along. On the other hand, if you enjoyed films like Primer, Moon, Astronaut ((the last push) Give it a watch.

I don't rate many movies high, this one is worth the watch!

[ericnottelling · 9/10 · 12 September 2013]

Let me start by saying I don't rate very many movies in the 8 9 or 10s but this one is a solid 9! I'm as harsh and hard a critic as they come but this movie was so well done it is hard not to like it. The movie has a solid dialog that drives the movie forward like a raging bull with great simplistic camera shots and settings. You can count the settings on 1 hand and they are well done and fit the tone of the dialog superbly. This movie is no doubt a low budget master piece and as a script writer think it is an amazing piece for younger writers to learn from. You don't need huge budgets to produce incredible work! It is a striking movie in the sense of Primer and I commend both writers for this excellent work. I back the AMC notion that story matters and they have produced a great one! You will love this movie! The only reason I did not give this movie a 10/10 is that I had to look up what P = NP is. If you are reading to deiced what if you are going to view the movie, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified by a computer can also be quickly solved by a computer. Enjoy this film!

This is excellent and timely

[richardlr65 · 8/10 · 18 October 2013]

Some of this is so current that I don't see how it got in when the movie was made. All of the premises and implications are not included but that is irrelevant to the film.

If you don't consider the future dystopian, the consequences of this topic, the singularity (should it happen) and the intelligence explosion (should it occur if the singularity occurs), a completely different world for humans is not that far away. In 100 years we may be as intellectually different from now as we are from our million year past ancestors. The evolution into a new species (Kurzweil).

From a dystopian viewpoint it would either be the end of our species or a setback of our civilizations by centuries.

I've been listening to "end of the world stuff" all my life. I grew up during the intensifying cold war. I was born the year the Soviets detonated their first nuclear weapon and the "duck and cover" stuff started. In any case, my point of view is as at least non-dystopian if not utopian.

Truly a thoughtful and incisive thriller...Superb!!!

[vwatttx · 10/10 · 14 September 2013]

Well worth your time! Written with thoughtful intelligence. Excellent acting and directing. Minimalist scenes and concise, insightful, and well written dialogue. This one is a must see for an intelligent, thinking man's movie. Barclay is outstanding as the arrogant, not-so-likable protagonist. A moral debate set in a "can we?" versus "should we" political and social forum against our current pace of technological floodwater innovations. An interesting look at the "super math nerds" from HS and college, who now may determine our collective future. Real world applications versus the "think tank" atmosphere of research and academia...

A great way for conspiracy, math, and philosophy geeks to spend a Friday night

[kanerex · 9/10 · 22 August 2015]

if anyone is into computer science or mathematics AND into conspiracies AND into good philosophical movies, watch Travelling Salesman Movie, great movie. i know that's a lot of different stuff put together, but it's a great movie, and worth an hour and a half of pondering the implications of mathematics and its role in the world today, as well as the ethical and spiritual implications behind mathematics and working for the government.

aside from more character development (not that the portrayals or writing for them was bad), there wasn't anything about this movie i didn't love. i have a degree in history and religious studies, and this movie definitely sheds a little light into things like the first atomic bombs, chemical weapons, cyber-warfare, and other similar activities where civilians may be called upon to lend their expertise to the government. and besides that, there's just some great tension and one liners throughout.

you won't be disappointed. :)

Good dialog on the implications of a world where P == NP

[chiszp · 9/10 · 1 December 2016]

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.

A movie for very Computer Science nerds.

[Paradoxical_Perceiver · 8/10 · 8 February 2022]

The movie projects the aesthetics of a theorem and how it can simply change the world for better or worse. It deals with what would be the possibilities if a Millenium problem that is P Vs NP would be solved and ponders it further on what would happen if this solution is concentrated in the hands of only one entity. Would or wouldn't that entity use to play God? Would it be ethical to keep it from the world? Such questions have been arising since a long time in Scientific Research. Overall, this movie is a must watch for all Science nerds as some of the points discussed would make you indulge in giving it a thought yourself. Great plot!

Realistic

[refspn · 10/10 · 16 March 2021]

If you think the behavior of the characters in this film is unrealistic, then you haven't had much exposure to academics or NSA "patriots". Though the existence of a solution to the specific problem may be fiction, the issues dealt with in this film are all too real. Further, advances in quantum computing may make P=NP practically irrelevant, but would have the same effect on the world as the existence of the solution in the film.