FilmJudge - The Net

REVIEW

The Net
1995
Certificate: 12 | Runtime: 114 | Director: Irwin Winkler
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Jeremy Northam, Dennis Miller

Angela Bennett (Bullock) is a software engineer working from home. She is sent a disk containing a new kind of bug by a friend, who later dies in a mysterious plane crash. Angela, oblivious of this, goes on holiday and meets the mysterious Jack (Northam) who secretly wants the disk she has. Angela later discovers that her entire identity has been altered and tries to find out what is happening to her.

The Net is a very shoddy excuse for a film. It desperately wants to be a high-tech thriller, but since the technology is laughable and the thrills are non-existent, that becomes an almost impossible goal. None of the cast members seem particularly interested to be in it, and the script is so full of plot holes and convenient twists that there is very little any actor could do with it.

The flaw with this film is that so little of it is believable, a problem which starts with the main cast members. Sandra Bullock is one of the best at playing the likeable girl-next-door; she has a non-threatening charm about her which appeals to most people. However, no matter how many times we're told she's a software engineer, we just don't buy it. Just because she is seen talking to people over the internet and buying gigantic pizzas on her own, there is nothing about her which creates the illusion of the "quiet and lonely nerd", which is what we're supposed to think. And even when she's supposed to be fighting for her very existence she doesn't seem that bothered - aside from having the odd cry here and there and pushing over a monitor every now and again - I've seen people run more frantically to catch a train!

Similarly, Northam is just far too foppish, and in some respects, far too good an actor to be playing the silly one-dimensional villain role he's been stuffed into. His character appears so rarely that there is no time for Northam to develop it into anything other than a snarling pretty-boy, and considering he's really the only visible villain of the piece, you're never quite sure why Angela has so much trouble eluding him.

Perhaps the daftest thing about the whole film is the totally farcical use of the internet to control and manipulate Angela's world. You might be thinking that with hindsight it's very easy to trash such things, but even when it came out over 10 years ago, the capabilities seemed remarkable while the software used to implement everything was laughable.

The direction from Winkler is astonishingly lazy in places. I'm not giving too much away by saying that when the aforementioned plane crash takes place, the foundation shot gives the pilot about half an hour to deal with his situation, and yet he manages to crash straight into a huge tower. And will someone please tell directors and screenwriters alike, that when software is removed from a computer, the picture on the screen doesn't visibly melt away.

The Net is particularly hard to like, not just because it's bad, but because there is an undeniable sense that's it's quite pleased with itself. There is certainly an air that the film contains absolutely no humour or witty banter because it's making a serious point, but I guess when so much of it is unintentionally funny there's no need to script any in the first place.

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