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.
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.