The Net
The Net is a wonderful film for people on the Internet. So it's appropriate that I am reviewing the movie for you people on the net. As most of you already know, the Internet is full of information, right at our fingertips. The Net takes that fact and puts a spin on it. What would happen if someone screwed up our information, just to get rid of us? That's exactly what happens to Sandra Bullock in this movie. Of course, most of you wonder how you would be able to get rid of someone, because they must have friends or relatives. But what if your a seclusive person, with a mother who can't remember you?
That pretty much describes Angela Bennett (Bullock), the hero of the movie. Angela works as a beta-tester for Cathedral, but she works in her house. She has friends at the company that she has never met, and neighbors that she has never seen. This sets up the main plot of the movie. One day, she receives a disk from one of her friends at Cathedral. She puts it into her Mac and comes up at Mozart's Ghost, an entire Web site dedicated to Mozart. She is accidentally sent to a web site, with a Pi symbol in the bottom-right hand corner. The Pi symbol is the symbol for the Praetorians, a group of ruthless hackers.
This disk proves more trouble than Angela had planned. After discovering her friend from Cathedral died in a plane crash, she goes on vacation to escape. While there, she meets the mysterious Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam). In fact, he's everything she was looking for in a man. But he has a secret, and a very dangerous one it is. He is one of the Praetorians, but only we know that. Many mystery/suspense movies let you find out things at the same time the hero does Chinatown, but that's what makes this one so fun and tense. We watch as she does the wrong things with the man, but we can't do anything to stop her, so we cling to the seat and yell at the screen.
Most of the suspense of the movie is credited to Irwin Winkler, the director. He had the idea after he heard about a man who hired a detective to check into his past to see if he had any criminal records (or something like that). The way he directed the movie is terrificly tense and edgy. We feel frustrated because we want her to succeed, but everytime she gets ahead of the bad guys, they take that advantage out. We get very frustrated and so we sympathize with Angela Bennett. That's how Winkler makes this movie good. We hate the bad guys, and we love the good guys.
Probably the biggest and best thing about this movie, though, is Sandra Bullock. I don't think I would have sympathized with her character if it had been overacted, as so many actresses do these days. Bullock has this charm that wins over anyone, and not many actresses have that quality. I have to say that she is one of my favorite actresses and I look forward to her movies. Northam has the obligatory role of obvious bad guy, but he handles it rather nicely. That we hate him so much is credit to Northam. The rest of the cast unfortunately takes back seat to these two.
The Net is rated PG-13. There is some harsh language, which actually should have given the movie an R rating. Thankfully, it wasn't. There is a fair amount of violence, and some sexuality, but nothing shown on screen. Winkler may have done a great job directing this movie, but Bullock steals the show in this Hitchcock-type movie.