Retro Film Review: The Net (1995)

In the beginning of 1996 users of Croatian bulletin boards services participated in the poll designed to establish popularity of Hollywood actresses. The winner of this popularity contest was Sandra Bullock, young actress who had just became a star by appearing in Speed. However, Croatian modem geeks probably chose Bullock because of the interview in which she had mentioned her own Internet surfing habits. For the geeks, whole idea of Bullock being "one of us" nicely corresponded with her down-to earth "girl next door" image, most responsible for her popularity. Whether intentional or not, the aforementioned statement was supposed to help the ticket sales for The Net, 1995 cyber-thriller directed by Irwin Winkler.

In this film Sandra Bullock plays Angela Bennett, computer expert who became so addicted to on-line communication that she barely leaves her house. One day Dale Hessman (played by Dan MacKinnon), an on-line friend and fellow computer expert, sends her a program that seems to allow access to most secret government and business databases. After MacKinnon dies in mysterious airplane crash, Angela goes to vacation in Mexico where she meets suave Jack Devlin (played by Jeremy Northam), who later turns out to be assassin hired to kill her. She manages to run back to States only to find her entire existence literally erased - somebody has tampered with her files within various government institutions and replaced them with files belonging to the convicted felon. Now she is forced to run for her life and evade both the assassins and police. It becomes clear that the disk is the key of mystery.

As one of the first Hollywood films to actually tackle new phenomenon of Internet, The Net can be forgiven for not being too successful in this endeavour. Unfortunately, scriptwriters John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris can't be forgiven for using the emerging world of on-linecommunication as nothing more than an excuse for weak plot, full of situations and characters that became cliches in Hitchcock's time. Hollywood's technophobia and exploitations of popular sentiments against Bill Gates (who is thinly disguised in the form of movie's chief villain) are only a backdrop in rather predictable story of a single protagonist on the run from seemingly omnipotent Bad Guys. There are plenty of scenes that are completely unneccessary (like Angela's visit to her Alzheimer- stricken mother), full of plot holes or simply don't work. Jeremy Northam is terribly miscast as one of the film's villain. Although her character looks too good for someone who is supposed to spend days sitting in front of monitor, Sandra Bullock, on the other hand, uses all of her charms and talents to make her character believable and her efforts are at least partially successful. Her role alone is the only reason why this film should receive a passing grade, but this is not enough for recommending this film to anyone except Bullock's fans and those interested to see how Hollywood treated Internet in mid 1990s.

RATING: 3/10 (+)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on October 15th 2001)

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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1642-the-net?language=en-US
Critic: A