Yes, Colin Firth was amazing in The King’s Speech but here is why Jesse Eisenberg was better. As Mark Zuckerberg, Eisenberg was given one of the toughest leading male performances of the year. After having viewed The Social Network countless times, Eisenberg’s performance gets better and better, the subtle nuances in his facial expressions, the way in which he changes his voice, it is a subtle performance, one that is not heightened or highlighted by playing a character with a drug addiction or a speech impediment. He manages to have you completely against him one minute and completely for him the next, and while a lot of credit could be attributed to Aaron Sorkin’s script or David Fincher’s direction, both of their contributions would amount to nothing if the actor could not handle the material. Eisenberg did not have a completely likable character, a character who you can root for and get behind, he was given a role that required complexity and subtlety. It’s an underrated performance because it is not a showy one and it resides inside a character who does not have consensus likability. However it is for precisely those reasons, why Eisenberg’s performance is so great, it bubbles under the surface. It is for those reasons why Eisenberg had a tougher, thankless role and why he gave the best leading actor performance of that year.