The Net (1995)

Overrated and overhyped

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This film tells how a young computer technician sees her life stolen by hackers, who want to install an advanced computer hacking program on the computers of banks and state enterprises. Soon, she turns into a target, sought by the police, and arranges a way to stop the villains. It's a rather unreal story, full of holes but nice, creating a suspense that can hold us until the end. The pace is good and the short length also helps, there is no plot for a very long film. I especially liked Jeremy Northam, who gives us the main villain, a dangerous assassin in charge of stealing a disc that went to the hands of Angela (Bullock's character), and that tries to do it approaching romantically of her before revealing its face and trying to kill her. Sandra Bullock also played well, but we have seen this actress in several other similar characters. The rest is within the standards of a regular action movie of the nineties, so there is nothing more to point out here.

Now this was a blast from the past, my teenage years (I was 17 at the time). It might seem crazy these days but I distinctly remember watching this in the cinema with a friend, and both of us scoffing at how ridiculous the movies premise was. The whole idea of the internet (something that was more of a joke back then) being able to bring down someone's entire life. The idea of people actually having portable computers and being able to use them, online! everywhere! The idea of someone's life revolving around a computer...or more specifically the net, was at the time almost inconceivable (unless you were rich). Yes these were simpler times my friends, back before the internet was an integral part of people's lives, or before the internet was even taken seriously. Hell back then movies like this were the only introduction some people had to the, so called, information highway. This and movies like 'The Lawnmower Man' were pretty much the only things most common people saw of the internet, hence why we all thought it was a gimmicky flash in the pan. Even British videogames TV show 'GamesMaster' would mock the internet with its limited abilities at the time. We were told one day we'd all be surfing the net, we all ridiculed the notion, how wrong we were.Anyway the movie. Systems analyst Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is accidentally drawn into the dark world of cyber terrorism when her work college sends her sensitive information on a floppy disk (remember those?!). The information revolves around the death of the US Secretary of Defense and a large software company CEO, Jeff Gregg. Whilst on holiday Bennett gets wined and dined by mysterious British gent Jack Devlin whom she starts to have feelings for. But before she knows it this British gent is trying to kill her so he can get his hands on this disk. Following a nasty accident where Bennett tries to escape Devlin, she awakes in hospital to discover her life has been deleted. Bennett must now try and find help to recover her life, evade Devlin, and uncover the truth on the disk.Yeah so the plot is your typical computer hacking/expert, on the run type affair which is now a dated concept. This idea was quite new at the time but director Irwin Winkler really tapped into the public's interest by utilising the newfangled internet contraption. The internet wasn't unheard of at the time of course, but it was intriguing to the masses and was used a lot to present an exciting new angle to movies. It was almost like an unexplored universe and Hollywood wasn't gonna let it slip by without milking its every potential.The other main draw for this movie was actress Sandra Bullock who was literally the biggest thing in Hollywood between 1993 - 1995. Hot off a trilogy of blockbusting hits that were 'Demolition Man', 'Speed' and 'While You Were Sleeping', Bullock could do no wrong. She was America's sweetheart with her adorable, girl next door looks and squeaky clean image. People just went to movies starring Bullock, no questions asked, she was huge.This movie also used the highly unpopular nerd image which was still something to mock at the time. Nowadays nerds are all the rage but back in the day oh no, being a nerd was not cool. But what baffled people even more was the introduction to a sexy female nerd, this was virtually unheard of at the time. This did present a problem for the movie simply because no one believed a sexy female could be a whizz- kid on computers or a nerd. Especially Bullock who was Hollywood's new darling leading lady. And admittedly it is hard to believe Bullock in this role because she simply doesn't look like she understands what shes talking about half the time. She also looks surprisingly unathletic considering her previous action movies, she kinda sleepwalks through this looking bored.Looking back now this movie is fun simply to see all the retro hardware and early programs in action. All these chunky laptops, very basic net page layouts, disk swapping and loading etc...it does bring back many memories. The action is kinda sparse but reasonably thrilling I suppose, it was never gonna be a violent movie with Bullock in the lead. Bullock was the queen of PG-13/12 rated movies. So the movie cuts away for any violence and there is little profanity, if any. Jeremy Northam is easily the best thing about the film with his devilishly charming contract killer, probably why his character is called Devlin.In the end this is a very safe and harmless action thriller that didn't want to rock the boat for its leading lady. Bullock is still cute and cuddly while under the stress of being hunted down by a hit-man. Being a movie about computers director Winkler obviously couldn't pass up a chance to film at the Macworld/iWorld trade show in San Francisco. So naturally the tense unrealistic finale is shot there. It is hilarious to watch Bennett downloading/uploading such large chunks of data onto floppy disks just in the nick of time. I'm just gonna assume that the trade show would have had the best of the best computers on show so that made it possible. Its all very silly, cutesy and charming these days, so amusing to think this was a big serious release back in the day.5.5/10

Why a rating of 5? Because 10 stars go to to Sandra's black bikini... To be more precise, to Sandra's wonderful body and her amazing face shot in close up. 0 stars go to everything else, especially the way they present software. I suppose that the at the time Apple managers sponsored the film, just to destroy their own brand: A computer network that's so easy to hack and that lies about everything was not the best way to promote Apple... Thanks God Steve Jobs returned back and stopped immediately those ultra expensive, self destroying ad campaigns. If you love Sandra Bullock, watch this movie, it's worth it. Otherwise forget it.

Following her first big role in Demolition Man, and her big boost in Speed, the leading actress was getting bigger, so obviously the filmmakers wanted to cash in on her popularity at the time, so came this tekkie movie, from director Irwin Winkler (De-Lovely). Basically in Venice, California is computer expert and a systems and software analyst Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock), she works from home for Cathedral Software as a contract employee, and as she mostly communicates online and by telephone she has interpersonal relationships and hardly any with people, even her own mother (Diane Baker) who suffers Alzheimer's disease. A new security system called "Gatekeeper" is becoming universally used, it seems it will thrive for Cathedral in the computer software world as they created it, there also appears on a Cathedral game to be a virus, and a "π" (Pi) symbol appears on the systems occasionally, but Angela is ready for a vacation in Cozumel, Mexico. There she meets suave Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam), he is not all he seems though, as he pays a mugger to steal Angela's purse to take the disk out of it, following a romantic night together on a speedboat she finds his gun and realises he was going to kill her, she steals back the disk and escapes in a dinghy, but she collides with the rocks, destroying the disk and falling unconscious for three days. Angela wakes up and finds that all records of her identity have been deleted, someone checked her out of the hotel, her car is missing, her credit cards are invalid, her house is for sale, and her social security number is under the name "Ruth Marx", her name appears under a number of criminal offences. Another woman has taken her identity, the impostor offers to give her the life she had stolen back in exchange for the disk, which of course no longer exists, the only person she knows could help her get things back to normal, who recognises her facially, is her psychiatrist and former lover Alan Champion (Dennis Miller). With Angela's knowledge of computer systems she uses a password she found in Devlin's wallet and goes to Bethesda Naval Hospital to access confidential records, finding out a conspiracy and about cyberterrorists and hackers the "Praetorians", of course she is tracked along the way by Devlin, working as a contract killer for the cyberterrorists. There is a point where she is arrested due to the crimes listed on her changed records, but she manages to escape, but she is now accused of murder, so she has to rush to prove her innocence and release evidence of the corrupt security system incidents, it is at a computer convention that she accesses the systems once again, while Devlin and the impostor Ruth Marx (Wendy Gazelle) search for her. By the time they find Angela she has already sent all the evidence she gained to the FBI, and she is able to trick Devlin into erasing her false identity, chasing her he unintentionally shoots dead Ruth Marx, and she sprays a fire extinguisher causing him to fall from a catwalk to his death, the film ends with Angela reuniting with her mother and life going back to normal. Also starring Ken Howard as Michael Bergstrom, Ray McKinnon as Dale Hessman, Daniel Schorr as WNN Anchor, L. Scott Caldwell as Public Defender, Robert Gossett as Ben Phillips and Margo Winkler, Irvin's wife as Mrs. Raines. Bullock certainly proves a good choice being the originally lonely computer geek turned innocent fugitive breaking into a number of computers to sort herself out, and it is likely that this was made to coincide with the popularising of the internet, but Northum is rather wooden as the villain, the story is a little overcomplicated and confusing at times, and it could have been a little more pacey and have more frantic hide and seek style chases, but it is near watchable enough, an alright thriller. Okay!