The Net is another hacking-themed movie from the 90s (alongside the likes of Hackers and The Steal, which incidentally were both also released in 1995). It takes us back to the days of Windows 3.11, 3.5 inch floppy discs, boxy CRT computer screens, stiff-clicking corded mouses and big noisy clunky-keyed keyboards.
Sandra Bullock stars in this movie as a computer expert and innocent hacker called Angela Bennett, who stumbles across something relating to economic sabotage and murder, which some powerful people who have eyes in everything digital are hunting her for. They change her identity and make her life hell as she generally evades them and eventually exposes them, killing some of them and getting her life back.
Sandra was a big star in the 90s, having starred in Speed and Speed II alongside Keanu Reeves. She’s always a convincing actress.
The main antagonist in The Net is Jack Devlin, played quite well by Jeremy Northam, and his sidekick Ruth Marx is played well by Gazelle Ruth.
Dennis Miller also does a decent job as Dr Alan Champion – Angela’s old therapist-turned-lover now estranged, who seems to be the only person she can turn to who knows her in the real (offline) world and may potentially be able to help her (until they kill him also).
This movie commits the common Hollywood faux pas of nerding out about other movies for way too long, as if the non Hollywood audience is into that – in this case it was a cringeworthy 5 or 10 minute session of Sandra and Jeremy both worshipping Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961) while they’re meant to be on a date.
Strangely, this movie also ends with the Whiter Shade Of Pale by Annie Lennox – the same song that the movie Hackers ends with, which came out in the same year.
Overall, The Net is an OK movie if you haven’t seen it in many years. There’s a lot of mild action and an intense atmosphere, a bit like an old fashioned cop drama. It’s more than Watchable, but is not quite fascinating enough to be ranked anywhere higher than just OK in my opinion. Still, being OK is a respectable achievement here – if it weren’t kind of captivating in both theme and function like it is, I wouldn’t have ranked it OK here. Do check it out if you’ve not seen it before – you might enjoy it on a day when you’re busy with other things.