Amazon.com
The Net, the first of Hollywood's big cyberthrillers of the mid-1990s, was also the most successful, thanks in large part to the natural appeal of star Sandra Bullock. Still riding high from
Speed and
While You Were Sleeping, Bullock plays a computer expert victimized by sinister cyberforces who steal her identity for reasons unknown. It's a clever combination of high-tech paranoia and Hitchcockian references (including Jeremy Northam as a romantic stranger named Devlin, after Cary Grant in
Notorious). Film historians may look back someday on films like this--Roger Ebert calls them "hacksploitation"--to see what they reveal about our society's reaction to the increasing role of technology in our lives, just as we now study the fears of Communism and the atom bomb reflected in films of the 1950s. Dennis Miller and Diane Baker costar.
--Jim Emerson
Irwin Winkler's cyber-thriller shuffles morosely from action sequence to action sequence, like a long bus trip with multiple transfers. Sandra Bullock (who drove the bus in "Speed") plays a computer whiz who stumbles on evidence of a sinister conspiracy; she's pretty and likable, but this wan chase picture needs a lot more than she can give it. The screenplay, by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, is remarkably free of ingenuity, and therefore of suspense. It's unlikely that the movie's intended audience-computer-savvy viewers addicted to the speed and versatility of their machines-will be impressed by a thriller that unfolds at the deliberate pace of a "Matlock" episode. With Jeremy Northam and Dennis Miller. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker