The Net (I) (1995) User Reviews

'The Fugitive' Meets AOL

[The_Centurion · 6/10 · 30 December 2012]

Nostalgia may play a large part of my positive feelings towards this film as I watched it repeatedly on video with my younger sister as a teen. Back then "the net" was a new and largely undiscovered frontier, and this film romanticized hackers and the seemingly mysterious world wide web.

I would liken this to a less ambitious version of 'The Fugitive', a film that released two years prior (and by most accounts a superior thriller). Much of what happens in the course of this film is standard fare, but it is presented with a semblance of realism and never seems to hit any lulls or real snags in rhythm despite the frenetic pacing. The plot isn't entirely plausible or devoid of clichés, but it remains interesting from start to finish, and Bullock carries the role well.

There are scattered scenes that show astute directing on the part of Irwin Winkler, though some of the secondary characters give uneven performances. However, Bullock does an admirable service at depicting a frumpy insular woman uncomfortable with her own sexuality and outer beauty. Her character is both resourceful and vulnerable at once, and it's a fresh pace to see a female lead with some layers to peel back in a genre dominated by men. Dennis Miller is very likable in his role, and ably acts the part with a more downplayed version of his real life persona. He was my favorite character by far and brought a lot of warmth to the role.

I'm usually very critical of any movies I see, and am generally turned off by standard Hollywood fodder, but there is a certain charm to 'The Net' that I can't deny. I liked it in '95, and I like it again almost twenty years later. Like visiting an old friend, there's a familiarity to it that is so hopelessly 90's and so reminiscent of a bygone era--the inception of the internet age--that it carries a certain weight to me unmatched by the multitude of forgettable popcorn thrillers of the decade.

Ordering pizza's online in 1995

[carrandas · 6/10 · 4 November 2020]

This is one of those movies I loved as a kid. I gave it another watch now that it's on Netflix but sadly didn't live up to my memory. The movie has an interesting premise, especially for 1995: everything we do or own is just data on a computer. What if someone decides to change all that? It's a cool idea but it's not executed well with very little excitement.

Still, some things I learned:

• You could order a pizza on the net in '95
• You could already book a plane
• You only had a fancy BMW if it had a carphone
• She's using an Apple, I should have bought apple shares in '95
• Sandra Bullock was really hot in '95. Probably the main reason I loved it as an adolescent

"Tonight's been so out of control, huh?

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 17 August 2021]

This film somehow oddly feels even more dated than pictures made in the Fifties and Sixties. Probably because we're inundated with so much technology these days that floppy discs and dial up modems seem almost ancient. And I'm not even a tech geek when it comes to computers, I know just enough about them to come here and write a review. This movie would have had a much bigger impact over two decades ago when it first came out; today, much of what occurs in the film seems like a distraction. The scary part of the story's premise is even more palpable today though. With a handful of keystrokes, anyone's life can be made miserable at the hands of one person bent on creating havoc. Just find yourself on the wrong side of a Yelp business review and you'll know what I'm talking about. Anyway, the film has it's moments of intrigue and danger, going full circle to connect the dots from the opening suicide of a high ranking government official to a vast conspiracy involving a cyber security firm with dubious motives. If nothing else, Sandra Bullock makes for an eye appealing protagonist.

Sandra rocks!

[David, Film Freak · 4 March 2001]

This awesome, action-packed little gem, is one of my all-time favorite movies!! Sandra Bullock, once again, outdoes herself in this wicked film all about the Internet and the taking-over of people's lives.

In 'The Net', Bullock stars as Angela Bennett, a computer-whizz, who while on holiday, encounters a dangerous man, who steals her wallet... and her life.

Soon, the real Angela Bennett disappears, and an ex-con, takes on her identity, swapping her life for Angelas!

Of course, Sandy isn't the type to take this kinda thing lying down - and all on her own, she fights hard to get back the life they took away from her.

A wicked film - that'll leave you breathless for start to finish!! 9/10

Cyber-thriller has a few internal glitches, but it keeps on running.

[emm · 6/10 · 17 February 1999]

This isn't a bad movie thriller to keep you off the Internet for two hours, but can you take the risk? THE NET sounds unconvincing since our love of computers and cyber-sputting expresses what the story is all about, and a possible fad to recognize. Thankfully, it does attempt to bring some raw suspense that is head-and-shoulders above other lame films that contend to "artificial communication". Once again, Sandra Bullock knows how to keep her fans happy, and even though it's no "chick-flick", she's still the likeable character inside. This time, she's stalked in a game of cat-and-mouse and becomes ruined by an identity crisis. Even with the brand new concept of cyberware, that's just normal for a suspense thriller. An old, traditional "chase" plot gives the movie a blip on the screen, but the story is greatly paced and exciting enough to increase your pulse rate to rapid highs. The computer mess is the biggest fuss some viewers will have in common, including all those not used to this new style. A good shot at a modernization of mystery-suspense films, but you know exactly what to predict here. Why the new TV series?

25 years ago this would have been science fiction. Today it's cliché.

[Anonymous_Maxine · 6/10 · 25 July 2004]

Odd the way technology works. Less than a decade ago, there was this completely different technological world, a world of pagers, floppy disks, dial-up modems (which are as obsolete as typewriters), and gigantic brick-like cell phones. I remember being amazed at that little tiny flap at the bottom of the phone, as thin as a credit card and yet able to pick up your voice and transmit it through the air. Now it's a feature so obsolete that it may as well never have been there. Sandra Bullock plays Angela Bennett, a lonely computer analyst who is so connected to her computer that she sits on the beach in Mexico, on her first vacation in six years, with her laptop on her lap. It's not only like a source of nourishment but her connection to the world and the establishment and maintenance of her identity.

This is where her problems begin. Like The Manchurian Candidate back in the 1960s (and again in less than a week from this writing), The Net plays on the popular fears of the society in which it is released. The Manchurian Candidate originally played off the fears instilled in people by the recently ended Cold War, while The Net, a much less potent thriller, suggests the scary possibilities of a world in which we are so inextricably connected to computers. Probably the most interesting thing in the movie now is the computers, such as the massive laptops with the tiny screens, the indispensable floppy disks which are now almost nonexistent, the graphics, etc.

Angela Bennett has had her digital identity stolen and replaced with that of Ruth Marx, who has a lengthy police record and who thus takes over Angela's identity. It's pretty clever, I suppose, the way the movie presents Angela as though she hasn't left her apartment in six years and with a mother suffering from Alzheimer's (and thus not able to help identify the real Angela later), but it's pretty hard to believe that not a single person in the office where she worked noticed that Angela started being a completely different person. She had no significant other, was not dating, and no parents who could identify her, but was she such a recluse that even the people in the office she worked in didn't even know what she looked like?

At any rate, the plot of the movie is pretty smartly created, although it is created as though it were an excuse for a lot of chase scenes, one of which takes place on a merry-go-round in a great homage to Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train, one of the many classic films to which the movie alludes, several of them other Hitchcock films. Bennett has been given a disk which contains a website, I suppose, which turns out to contain a weakness in a security system about to be set up to protect everything from banks to Wall Street to the CIA. By holding down Control and Shift and clicking on the little Pi icon in the corner of the screen, you are transported from a ludicrous page about Mozart's Ghost, apparently a god-awful metal band, and into highly classified government documents. The disk provides the bad guys with a reason to want to capture Bennett, and thus you have a movie.

Angela goes from a comfortable but bored computer analyst, doing a lot of her work from home and ordering pizza on the Internet at the end of the day (presumably one of the future possibilities of the internet which never came to exist), to a wanted fugitive, ultimately caught and put into a jail cell for someone else's crimes. She has lost her home, her job, her identity, her life. Bullock actually puts in a pretty good performance in the movie. I'm not a huge fan, but I appreciated the realness that her character had, since she is not an over the top actor, her characters are generally very real because she is as well.

Where the movie trips up is that it tries to suggest that such identity theft could happen to anyone in our technological age, but given the effort put into presenting Angela as someone with no personal contacts with just about anyone, really it could only happen to someone like Angela, and are there really that many people that no one can identify by looks? Even the guy at the local video store might recognize her as the lady who rents under her account. Oh well. There's also a glitch in the end of the movie that Mick LaSalle points out and that only people familiar with San Francisco, where the climax of the film takes place, will notice. As Angela rushes through a Macintosh exhibition at the real Moscone Center, she desperately tries to copy all the computer files before the bad guys get her. Pretty tense, but if she had been smart, she could have gone to The San Francisco Chronicle office, which is a block down the street from the Moscone Center.

But hey, maybe the Chronicle doesn't have high enough walkways out back.

Flimsy, far-fetched, but spunky and attractive

[moonspinner55 · 6/10 · 11 May 2002]

Sandra Bullock is very appealing as an unloved independent systems analyst who unknowingly gets hold of a disk that could bring worldwide chaos; pretty soon, she's dodging bad guys, running from the cops and putting her allies in danger (including Dennis Miller, who is surprisingly good). Despite a penchant for filming mouths in close-up, Irwin Winkler has directed a very fast, fun technical-thriller in which charming Bullock is bounced from one nightmare to another. I loved the way she gets out of a building swarming with security: she dons a fireman's outfit and escapes, but then the bad guys see a nicely piled fireman's outfit (and helmet!) sitting on the sidewalk and yell, "She's getting away!" Just one example of how this movie is so completely brainless, but yet entertaining enough on a non-think level that you tell yourself not to notice. You'll hate yourself in the morning, though. **1/2 from ****

not too realistic, but what it portrays should be a cause for concern

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 15 August 2005]

When "The Net" was first being advertised, the ads made it look ridiculous. Then, when I saw it, it was actually quite good. Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) spends her days working on the computer and has never gotten to know her neighbors. Then, through a series of events, her identity gets erased by a cabal of shadowy people, and she can't prove that she exists.

Some parts of the movie are a little bit far-fetched; you'd probably know which parts if you saw the movie. Still, it's a good look into what the existence of the Internet may have wrought on unsuspecting people. I do recommend it.

many complicated ways to kill people

[SnoopyStyle · 5/10 · 3 December 2014]

Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a software beta test consultant. She's a homebody with few friends outside of cyberspace. She collects computer viruses for her friend Dale Hessman. She visits her mom (Diane Baker) in an old age home but she doesn't remember her. Dale sends her a program that seems to access unauthorized sites and then he's killed. She goes on vacation and meets Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam) who turns out to be a cold-hearted killer looking for the program. She barely escapes the attempt on her life and computers are going wrong giving her an alternate identity Ruth Marx. Her life is taken over by Devlin and she's pursued by the police. The only person she can turn to is Dr. Alan Champion (Dennis Miller) who actually knows her in real life.

The question is why not just kill her. That seems to be the objective from before. Of course, he's trying to date her. If they want to know who she talked to, why not kidnap her? Torture is so much easier. Also why couldn't she make copies of the disk? Didn't she have access to the program in the hotel? There is a lot of stuff that is questionable even if the computer stuff is reasonable. The stuff surrounding the computer stuff makes little sense. Also the movie insists on killing people in the most complicated ways possible. And it seems like Bullock is always running in this movie.

An oldie but goodie.

[darrelltill · 7/10 · 29 August 2022]

I'm sad to see this movie has a relatively low rating. It isn't a perfect 10 but it's a very decent and enjoyable yarn. Get over the fact that it portrays a romanticised version of the internet that never existed - this was made a few years before it became commercially viable, so the majority of people didn't know a thing about it or what it looked like. Ignore this and you have a decent conspiracy thriller. Plus, the portrayal of the internet is infinitely more realistic than its cartoonish contemporary 'Hackers', which came out the same year. The tech isn't the star of the show here, and it doesn't rely on spectacle.

The Net

[phubbs · 5/10 · 26 July 2017]

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

Sandra Bullock and dial up modems!

[PredragReviews · 8/10 · 4 April 2017]

Think back to 1995, did you even know what I. D. theft was? Well Michael Ferris and John Brancato did, and at the time, it wasn't really that scary. In the film, Sandra Bullock lives alone, spending most of her time fixing her company's computers online. She seems to rarely go out or socialize except with others by computer. She even orders her food over the computer, and it's delivered. Because she keeps to herself, hardly anyone knows her personally, and her mother is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's Disease, so she doesn't remember her. Her only friend is an ex boyfriend, who happens to be a psychiatrist, and she's broken up with him. The fact that she's so incognito has a lot to do with the film. Before leaving for her first vacation in years, she get's a call from a friend in her company who is confused about a weird disk that's come into his possession, and wants her to help him. Not willing to figure it out over the phone or on the computer, he tells her he needs to see her in person and he's flying to her home in L. A. He never arrives...

The cast is great, with Sandra Bullock pulling out all the stops in her fight for what is right. There are no sex scenes, no violence or over-indulgent special effects, just content. Every movie lover should own a copy of this film as an example of how to make a film without over indulgence and heavy reliance on effect.. This is a film that can be viewed several times, with each time revealing a little more detail. There is less obvious comedy and glamour in this role, but Sandra Bullock is excellent and intense, as the woman fighting for her life, and ends on a happy note caring for her Mother, and with a new status, working from a new home. There were a lot of conspiracies in this movie, in my opinion its a film that makes you really think how controlled your life is by the internet. Very compelling story.

Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

A High-Tech Nightmare Scenario

[seymourblack-1 · 7/10 · 28 August 2014]

The mid-1990's was an exciting time when the use of the Internet grew rapidly and it became obvious to everyone that it would soon affect virtually every area of human activity. Alongside the excitement, however, many anxieties were expressed about the potential dangers involved and many of these feature in this movie which presents the kind of nightmare scenario that many people feared. Identity theft, a breakdown of social interaction and cyber-terrorism were all recognised threats and are used to good effect in "The Net" to create a fast-moving thriller that was very topical at the time of its release but now inevitably looks dated.

Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a computer analyst who works at her home in Venice, California where she identifies and eliminates viruses in programs that are sent to her by San Francisco software company, "Cathedral Systems". When one of her colleagues sends her a program that makes it easy to access and modify data held by government departments, airports, hospitals and banks etc, she's told that he'll soon be travelling down to her home to work with her on the program. Shortly after, he's killed in a plane crash and so she continues with her original plan to go on vacation to Mexico and takes her laptop and a disk containing the new program that she'd been asked to work on.

In Mexico, she meets a smooth-talking man called Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam) who seduces her but is really only interested in stealing her disk and killing her. When this becomes obvious, Angela manages to escape but after returning home, discovers that her house has been put up for sale and her identity has been swapped with a woman called Ruth Marks who's apparently a criminal wanted by the police. It swiftly becomes evident that Angela's being pursued by a group of cyber-terrorists called "The Praetorians" and the police and can't prove her real identity because she has, for many years, led a reclusive lifestyle in which her only regular face-to-face contact was with her mother who has Alzheimer's disease.

The only person that Angela knows who could confirm her identity is her ex-psychiatrist and ex-lover, Dr Alan Champion (Dennis Miller) and although he provides some help, he's soon prevented from getting Angela out of her nightmare and she remains on the run until she eventually confronts Devlin for the final time.

There are plenty of chases and well-executed action sequences in "The Net" and Hitchcockian influences such as , the wrong man (woman) theme, the fairground motif and confused identities as well as a disk that becomes the MacGuffin, add extra interest. The power of the terrorists seems overwhelming and an atmosphere of paranoia prevails when amongst other things, the modification of key computer records result in the deaths of a prominent politician, a hospital patient and a software expert who's piloting a plane.

The focus throughout the entire story is on Sandra Bullock's character and her skill in making herself convincingly introverted and work-obsessed plays a huge part in the success of this movie as she outshines everyone else who appears in it.

THE NET : Irwin Winkler Wastes The Film's Potential...

[cwrdlylyn · 5/10 · 3 January 2006]

THE NET

I certainly didn't expect this movie to be classic when I put it in last night. I was thinking it would be a "no-brainer" stupid little thriller starring Sandra Bullock. Essentially... I was right.

THE NET had the potential to be a better film. The storyline actually creates situations of immense suspense and is paced rather well. The whole computer virus storyline is so confusing to someone not too familiar with computers... and I'm sure there are plot holes in there, but I didn't notice.

What keeps THE NET from being truly good is terrible direction. Lately, I've started to notice how easily a bad director can destroy a film and this was a good example... certain moments in this film are just comically bad.

The scene of Sandra Bullock's boat get away and her impending crash looks terrible. And normally I can forgive obvious special effects... but I'm sorry, the obviously fake rocks, the poorly edited stunt woman, the ridiculous close ups on Bullock's face. This moment is so terrible and just acts like a giant speed bump in the growing action.

Aside from this, Jeremy Northam is god awful in his role. He goes so far over the top trying to be this seductive threat in Bullock's life that I was laughing many times when I wasn't supposed to be. The more threatening, angry, and sexual he tries to get... the less frightening he becomes. Not an ounce of nuance or subtlety. Where was a director telling him to hold back? Or just to tell him... get off my set... you suck! Otherwise, the director, Irwin Winkler, takes far too long at times when he doesn't need to. I liked the Dennis Miller/Sandra Bullock love story that started to develop. But in the end, the scenes are pointless and they come to an abrupt end. And anytime Sandra Bullock was on the run, Irwin Winkler just keeps the camera rolling. There is no example of tightly constructed... suspenseful editing.

On the plus side, despite the flaws, the movie still can be exciting at points... and Bullock has some good moments that show some deeper potential. Had this film been done by a director with a keener eye, perhaps both Bullock and the film could have been much better.

As is, it's the kind of film that's easy to sit through... but that's partially b/c it's so bad it's good. It's not the worst film that ever was, but it could have been far better.

... C/C- ...

Pretty Good

[Anya-fan · 2 September 2000]

I saw this film just last night, and I liked it. I know a lot about the Internet and so I DID notice the factual errors, but I was able to ignore them and enjoy the suspense. Sandra Bullock was good, and Jeremy Northam was creepy as the bad guy, mostly because he was so goodlooking and smooth that he was hard to hate.

I'd give it an 8 out of 10 for good suspense and an interesting look at the Internet when it was just beginning.

Not Bad.

[roigbiv · 7/10 · 22 August 2021]

Stumbled upon this as I was going through my suggested films on Netflix. Decided to watch because of Sandra Bullock.

I got to say it was refreshing to see a movie set in the mid 90s, where all the technology then seem to be obsolete now. I mean, I don't remember the last time I held a floppy disk?

The plot itself was okay.. it started off slow but gets exciting towards the end.

If you want to watch something chill and have nothing else to do, then I recommend this. But if you expect more, then you'd probably be disappointed.

one of the believable 90s hacker films without silly graphics

[HelenMary · 6/10 · 23 February 2013]

Okay, firstly I like Sandra Bullock anyway, but do admit she is not often lost in her characters and plays herself. She often plays slightly socially awkward characters however, she's believable, every-girl, and relatable and necessarily not too contrived especially in a storyline where you have to believe its happening and get involved.

Bullock is a computer analyst/programmer who works from home and gets sent a disk by a friend to look at. This disk causes problems which she has to work out during which she has to go on the run, her identity is erased. Angela Bennett is no more. It's scary stuff, and would have been more so back in the 90s when much of this was fairly new - it's very true that all our personal information is on computer so we all are vulnerable.

Sandra plays increasing desperation well, and the story unravels rather than unfolds, and is quite emotional in places - especially those including her mother with Alzeimer's. Jeremy Northam, Brit actor, and rather dishy, plays the antagonist, and plays it well. Being so attractive, his nefarious ways are even worse, and as all her safety is stripped away, he's always there to make her run again. I like that the programming scenes don't have silly graphics (see Hackers) but are clear key/screen clicks and code being typed and this is one of the most realistic of the many hacker films that came out in the 90s.

This has aged well, except some of the technology of course, and it's still relevant. It is interesting to see technology changes ie the ease and normalcy of tracing mobile phones now for example. Note the policeman reading the Miranda rights off a piece of paper - was this filmed around the time they had changed? Historically interesting watching it (again) now, in 2013. A good, entertaining film in a similar vein as The Pelican Brief - intelligent writing and not predictable.

Typical 90's.

[undeaddt · 7/10 · 22 January 2018]

This is a typical 90's movie. Fun to watch, cringe moments, some good and some bad acting. All in all, an entertaining 2 hours movie for no purpose weekends.

Cyberspace Thriller That's Deeply Flawed

[eric262003 · 6/10 · 3 December 2017]

"The Net" takes you on an exciting adventure through cyberspace. With the feeling of a thrill ride that has an Alfred Hitchcock feeling behind it, director Irwin Winkler misses his opportunity to take a potentially fascinating account to boldly go into world that was not covered much into at the time only to end up falling into the trap of a formulaic standard thriller. The early scenes were amazingly gripping and heart curdling, but the end was excruciatingly weak and if it wasn't for Sandra Bullock starring in it, this film would've cured my insomnia.

Just like her previous two outings before like "Speed" and "While You Were Sleeping", Bullock's facial expressions are convincing enough to garner some sympathy to the audience. Even through the more absurd situations, we can still remain invested in her characters. She's not just playing a character, she is the character.

Bullock plays the role as Angela Bennett, a software engineer who lives her life in cyberspace. Every thing she conducts is by computer or modem. Even ordering a pizza she does it online which was rare back in 1995. The only time she breaks from her reclusive phase is when she's on hiatus to Mexico and even carries her laptop there too. Just as she was going on her vacation, Angela gets into possession of a disk that contains pivotal information towards serious criminal activity from cyber thieves who call themselves the Praetorians. They know she's got the disk and will stop at nothing to get it back.

While sunning herself on the beach, she meets a handsome fellow hacker named Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam) who had the right amount of style and charisma to rival James Bond. The problem is he is armed with a gun and is not afraid to use it on her. She avoids his wrath, but by the time she gets back to the States, she's suspicious that the Praetorians have hacked into her system and changed her identification. Now she goes by the alias Ruth Marx and is wanted by the cops. Her mother (Diane Baker) isn't of great help in defending her daughter due to her advanced Alzheimer's disease. The only person who knows her identity is her ex-boyfriend, Dr. Alan Champion (Dennis Miller), but he thinks she's just having a meltdown. While this is happening, the real Ruth Marx (Wendy Gazelle) has taken Angela's job and her life.

The first hour of the film is virtually exciting with great moments of intensity to have your heart pounding. By the second hour, it become a formulaic cat and mouse chase as all the original intentions is reduced to just an afterthought. By the latter hours of the film it's just Angela running away from villains with their arms and the thriller clichés become more commonplace making everything all the more mundane and the final solution becomes more anti-climactic.

"The Net" has a premise into believing that being dependent on computers can have is assets and liabilities. If this movie was made in the 1970's or 1980's the genre would've been labeled as a science-fiction film. By today's standards it would be more reality based with its constant advancements making it more dependable than ever, this film was and still is a bit ahead of its time. Computer security systems are never fully foolproof and if put into the wrong hands, it can be quite catastrophic. Here we don't have Big Brother under the watchful eyes, but he's taking action in as well. It's a shame the move doesn't further look into it. My guess is car chases and gun chases are more exciting.

When all the smoke clears, "The Net" was still enjoyable mainly due to the casting of Sandra Bullock who succeeds in keeping the film tense due to her low-key performance. While the film is not up to par with an engaging thriller to hold onto in its entirety, we still have a character we can truly show empathy towards in spite of all the formulaic situations she's confronted with. Sure the suspense into the early days of cyberspace may have an exciting level of intention, but it's Bullock's performance that makes you sit through to the end.

What computers?

[RoadSideAssistance · 1/10 · 20 December 2006]

This movie is such a piece of unbelievable crap. First let me talk about the pros: Sandra Bullock in a black bathing suit.

Now the rest of the story which is all pretty much bad. We have said computer programmer Angela Bennett (who's online profile is ANGEL - HOW WITTY!!! I bet the directors cheered over that one for an hour) who basically checks other Company's software for errors/glitches etc. So we start with her ordering pizza on the Internet and then putting on a fireplace on her monitor (EXTREME computer skills shown thus far). This is after she finds some virus on a macintosh program which crashes the whole system after hitting the escape key. This is apparently a HUGE problem yet the virus created to do such could be done in about 1 minute with a simple batch file.

Any event, we move on. She gets this call from some other bloke (that works at the same company) and this fool says to go click this symbol which apparently opens up some secret Internet gateway to a bunch of unprotected 'top secret' data woohoo! Angela saves this crap on a disc and now the people that created this loophole are out to get her. This of course is only after she hooks up with one of the bad guys only BEFORE he tries to kill her BEFORE she jumps in the ocean off his boat, BEFORE she winds up in a random hospital.

Problem #1: You can't create a loophole on the Internet to gain access to a bunch of top secret FBI data. Where the hell did this come from? Since when can a group of hackers control the basic flow of the Internet (even in 95)? Problem #2: Angela would need proper identification before a hospital or clinic would release her. She could not just pack her things and go.

Then these 'hackers' or whatever change Angela's ID so she can't get help from anyone and conveniently enough all her ID is gone. So she returns home and a cat and mouse chase goes on and on and on.

Apparently all police and FBI people are stupid and don't believe her. So then she has to utilize a bunch of tactics to enter into the building where she works (where the person who is now filling in for her is) and get back to her old computer. She starts talking to some other random bloke and finds out who is behind everything through some BS IP address that the director knows the audience is too stupid enough to believe.

Then she runs to some center to mail all this information to the FBI. She apparently HAS to use a mainframe to email stuff to the FBI. But then the same fool that tried to kill her BEFORE throwing her in the water catches her and easily hacks into the FBI again (wtf?). But remember that cool virus? Well somehow she luckily gets that and even though the virus only worked on software, it now works on the entire system too. It brings down the whole mainframe which has all the fake information because the mainframe was just sitting in the middle of some convention... WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP! Anyway, the now uber virus works and Angela (the real one now) runs away and later kills the evil dude with a fire extinguisher. He of course has a gun, runs up to her so he's like 2 feet away and then decides to aim. CLASSIC Hollywood.

All in all this movie is so full of BS and crap. Anyone who doesn't know a lot about computers will be wildly fooled into thinking this crap is possible but not one thing is accurate concerning computers or the net. And I honestly doubt I'd see a multiplatform virus for Mac and a mainframe computer (*cough LMAO*).

Hacking into lives

[rollernerd · 7/10 · 30 August 2022]

Welcome back to another edition of Adam's Reviews **queue in intro music**

Today's movie review is the suspense thriller The Net (1995) starring the sensational Sandra Bullock as computer expert Angela Bennett whose life revolves around debugging software computers, chatting to her friends online and works remotely so here is minimal human contact. She has a mother who lives at a facility for advanced Alzheimer's care and wouldn't know Angela from a nurse. Angela comes across a disturbing program that seems to be hacking into government, banking, hospital and other systems through a supposed cybersecurity program. Before she can meet with the online friend who raised his concerns over the program, the online friend is killed in a mysterious plane crash. Angela blithely proceeds with her Mexican vacation, but doesn't put two and two together until she meets a dashing stranger on the beach by the name of Jack played Jeremy Northam. Jack lures and seduces Angela and reveals himself as a cold-hearted killer looking for the program. Angela barely escapes the attempt on her life and her identity is not only erased through license, social security and other records, but Angela, fingerprints and all, is given a new name of Ruth Marx and a rap sheet attached to this name that includes prostitution and drug crimes, putting her on law enforcement's radar. Another hacker in on the scheme has taken over her identity at work and put her house up for sale.

"Our whole lives are on the internet!" is a line of Bullock's character which in reality fuses the gripping notions of identity theft, invasions of privacy and internet tracking that can be tied to the capabilities of not just multinational firms hacking into our lives but also government agencies. Paranoia is a key theme in this film as no one is who they seem - imposters abound, everyone appears suspicious which you can see in the movie where Angela gains allies and then quickly loses them. What remains are her consistent enemies who will not sleep until their prey is chased and hunted down. My only issue wit the film is he character of Jack Devlin, the assassin who plays this smarmy, arrogant, overconfident guy yet also has this sick sadistic and obsessive performance towards Bullock's character which you almost want to vomit. Maybe this is why I find him as the primary villain not genuinely threatening as the performance at times becomes artificial. Sandra Bullock does well for a sympathetic, isolated, spunky protagonist, who is fun to watch even if the plot takes a turn toward the realm of overly predictable thrillers. The filmmakers had a persuasive point to make about the outsized role computers were playing in our lives, so we can forgive the fact that back in 1995 most internet access was gained by agonizingly slow dial-up modem, complete with screechy dial tones, dropped connections, and halting downloads. Overall 7/5/10.

what bugs me most about this movie

[kirstymd · 4/10 · 5 July 2002]

Okay... she's on the boat with this guy, realizes he's out to kill her, knocks him out, and then finds the reason he's out to off her is this disk that got her coworker killed. So what would any rational person do? Maybe conk him over the head again to make sure he's really out?? Tie him up?? Look, Sandra honey, you've got the chance to escape while the guy is out for only so long. Until you know how long it will take you take you to escape, make sure he's not able to come after you. I HATE these stupid female victim roles. The rest of the movie was just a series of twists and turns that were completely convoluted and too unbelievable to remain interesting.

Gripping thriller or goofy time capsule?

[Ben_Cheshire · 8/10 · 23 August 2015]

I like "The Net." I first saw it back in 1996, on VHS probably. We probably didn't have the Internet yet, or it was very new to us. So this was all very exciting, but scary too. There was a great sense of fear around identity theft. In 2015, we are such internexhibitionists with social media and twitter that people become lax and then their private sex-text photos get shared with billions of people.

The Net is a good thriller with an excellent title that is elevated by the charisma of star Sandra Bullock (still a star in 2015, amazing). Bullock is an incredible role model as a female hero: she is smart, funny, feminine and likable. The main issue for The Net over the years has been the march of time itself. Thrillers require a certain immediacy and immersion, and the mentioning of goofy out of date technological jargon risks dragging you out of the moment. As a period piece, or a time capsule, The Net is perfect, but does it still work as it did for audiences in 1995?

Luckily, the Net is not really about technology, its about the nature of identity in a bureaucracy, explored through the lens of technology, with the interweb as a weapon, and those issues are still relatable, and a movie like The Net serves as a good reminder of how trusting we have become of our internet privacy.

My goodness

[nicholas-610-899841 · 7/10 · 23 March 2022]

"Laughable. Watching characters using DOS-based systems and dial-up modems must be quite bizarre for anyone used to today's smartphone and nano technology" Wow.

Just imagine watching a movie taking place before electric kettles boiled water more quickly than a pot on a stove; or when people rode a horse and cart; or when people had...gasp...a phone at home that went ring-ring.

Get some maturity with your age.

3/10

[Analog_Devotee · 3/10 · 8 January 2022]

Kicks off with a pretty enjoyable premise, but somewhere around the halfway mark seems to lose itself. What a shame. From the start, this one had all the makings of a timepiece thriller. Seems the momentum in the script just couldn't be maintained, resulting in a boring, meandering mess.