The Net (1995)
Directed by Irwin Winkler
Angela Bennett is a freelance computer systems analyst who tracks down software viruses. At night, she hooks up to the internet and chats to others 'surfing the net'. While de-bugging a new high-tech game for a cyber friend, she comes across a top secret program and becomes the target of a mysterious organization, who will stop at nothing to erase her identity and her existence in order to protect the project.
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8 films that influenced The Net
What critics say influenced The Net
This Devlin is a smooth customer; he even ties his handkerchief around her midriff to keep off the cool night air, just like Cary Grant's character named Devlin did in Hitchcock's "Notorious."
There's an amusement park scene (ripped off incompetently from "Strangers on a Train" and 250 bad imitations since), in which Bullock has to evade an assailant on a carousel.
A dumbed-down amalgam of "The Pelican Brief" (if dumber than that is possible) and the paranoia thrillers of the 1970s (such as "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor"), the movie's about Sandra versus Them.
"The Net" is even more a test of Bullock's appeal than was "While You Were Sleeping," in that here (and unlike the similarly structured "The Pelican Brief," which paired Julia Roberts with Denzel Washington) Bullock must carry the show on her shoulders alone.
A dumbed-down amalgam of "The Pelican Brief" (if dumber than that is possible) and the paranoia thrillers of the 1970s (such as "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor"), the movie's about Sandra versus Them.
Director Irwin Winkler, who'd previously given us a political movie without politics (Guilty by Suspicion) and a remake of a classic noir without atmosphere or flavor (Night and the City), here gives us a thriller without thrills, though Sandra Bullock in the lead and the putative theme—the paranoid possibility of deleting people's public profiles from computer networks—may keep you intermittently interested.
Longtime producer Irwin Winkler, whose first two forays into the director's chair ("Guilty by Suspicion" and "Night and the City") were well-crafted but lukewarmly received by audiences, brings more to this genre work than is needed--or even desired.
Director Irwin Winkler, who'd previously given us a political movie without politics (Guilty by Suspicion) and a remake of a classic noir without atmosphere or flavor (Night and the City), here gives us a thriller without thrills, though Sandra Bullock in the lead and the putative theme—the paranoid possibility of deleting people's public profiles from computer networks—may keep you intermittently interested.
Longtime producer Irwin Winkler, whose first two forays into the director's chair ("Guilty by Suspicion" and "Night and the City") were well-crafted but lukewarmly received by audiences, brings more to this genre work than is needed--or even desired.
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Here, it casts a Net for the Clueless crowd, with a tale of teen screen jockeys who must, I kid you not, “pool their resources to battle The Plague, a master hacker” who has framed them “in a diabolical industrial conspiracy.”