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The Net (1995 film)

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The Net
Theatrical release poster
Directed byIrwin Winkler
Written byJohn Brancato
Michael Ferris
Produced byIrwin Winkler
Rob Cowan
Starring
CinematographyJack N. Green
Edited byRichard Halsey
Music byMark Isham
Production
company
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release date
  • July 28, 1995 (1995-07-28)
Running time
115 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$22 million[2]
Box office$110.6 million[1]

The Net is a 1995 American action thriller film directed by Irwin Winkler[3] and starring Sandra Bullock, Jeremy Northam, and Dennis Miller.[4] The film was released on July 28, 1995.

In the film, a systems analyst with few personal contacts learns that all records about her life have been deleted, that her house has also been emptied, and she must now find a way to reclaim her original identity.

Plot

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United States Under Secretary of Defense Michael Bergstrom commits suicide after being informed that he has tested positive for HIV.

Angela Bennett is a freelance systems analyst in Venice, California employed by Cathedral Software. Her relationships are almost completely online and on the phone, with the exception of forgettable interactions with her neighbors and visits to her mother, who is institutionalized with Alzheimer's disease and often forgets who she is.

Angela's co-worker Dale, in San Francisco, sends her a floppy disk of the band website "Mozart's Ghost" with a backdoor labeled "π" that links to seemingly random and unrelated websites. Dale and Angela agree to meet the next morning, as he is planning on taking his own plane, but the navigation system in Dale's private aircraft malfunctions and the plane crashes, killing him.

Angela goes to the airport for her planned vacation but her flight to Cozumel, Mexico is one of many delayed due to computer system malfunctions. While relaxing in Mexico she meets the handsome Jack Devlin. After spending the day together, Devlin pays a mugger to steal her purse. He chases the mugger, catches him, and roots through the purse to find the disk and her passport and wallet. Devlin then shoots the mugger dead.

He takes Angela out on his speedboat, sleeps with her and plans to kill her as well, but she takes the bullets from his gun and knocks him out. While fleeing in a dinghy with the disk and Devlin's wallet, Angela collides with rocks and lays unconscious in a hospital for three days.

When Angela wakes up, she finds the disk was ruined by the sun. She sees a TV report that the US stock market nearly crashed due to hackers but will now be secured by a computer security system called "Gatekeeper" sold by Gregg Microsystems, a software company led by CEO Jeff Gregg.

Angela tries to get back to her hotel room but finds her reservation and credit cards have been deleted. She goes to a local embassy for a visa and finds that her social Security number and address are assigned to a "Ruth Marx". Back in California, her car is not where she remembers parking it in an airport lot. Her home has been emptied and a realtor says that Angela Bennett came to him with the deed and mortgage and put the house up for sale.

All records of her life have similarly been erased or reassigned to Ruth Marx. None of her neighbors remember her and cannot confirm her identity. While Angela speaks with the police, Devlin sits in a car outside and creates a lengthy criminal record for Ruth Marx from his laptop computer.

Before the police can arrest her, she grabs the realtor’s cellphone and runs away. When Angela calls Cathedral Software she is connected to an impostor “Angela Bennett”. The imposter offers her old life back in exchange for the disk.

Devlin is listening in and tracing the calls Angela makes from the realtor’s cellphone. She calls the only other person who knows her by sight, psychiatrist and former lover Alan Champion. He brings her a laptop, checks her into a hotel, arranges to have her mother moved somewhere safe and offers to contact a friend at the FBI.

Angela uses her knowledge of the backdoor and a password she found in Devlin's wallet to log into the Bethesda Naval Hospital's computer network. She learns that the autopsy of Secretary Bergstrom revealed he did not have HIV and his medical records were altered so he would be misdiagnosed with HIV.

Fellow hacker "Cyberbob" connects the π symbol with the "Praetorians", a group of cyberterrorists behind the recent computer failures at the airport and stock exchange and an electric power blackout in Atlanta. Angela and Cyberbob plan to meet in person, but their online chat is intercepted and Devlin goes to Cyberbob’s home.

While driving Angela to Santa Monica Pier to meet Cyberbob, Alan has a medical episode and the hospital tells Angela that he had an allergic reaction to penicillin. His electronic pharmacy records had been tampered with and he was given penicillin instead of antihistamines.

At Santa Monica Pier Devlin grabs Angela and she tells him she knows about Bergstrom’s misdiagnosis and that the disk was damaged and she doesn’t have it. He says Bergstrom was a homophobe so an HIV diagnosis would have predictably pushed him to suicide and Devlin’s employers, the Praetorians, need her and what she knows. Angela breaks free and returns to the hospital in time to watch Alan die. His hospital medical record was altered to say he was diabetic and he was given a fatal dose of insulin.

Angela takes Alan’s car but police records were changed to say the car was stolen and Angela is arrested by the California Highway Patrol. A man identifying himself as Alan’s FBI friend frees her from jail and says he wants to take down Devlin and the Praetorians. But when he asks about the disk being damaged in Mexico, she realizes she told that to Devlin not Alan so he is working with Devlin. Angela forces his to crash the car and escapes again.

Angela watches a TV report that says that hackers shut down all banks in Chicago except one that was secured by Gatekeeper software. She realizes that Gregg Microsystems‘s access to airport, government, hospital, utility and banking systems would enable them to alter computerized records. The new Under Secretary of Defense appointed to replace Bergstrom made a deal with Gregg Microsystems to secure the entire federal government with Gatekeeper software. Before his death Bergstrom had opposed the use of Gatekeeper. The TV news also reports of a local car accident and flashes Angela’s mugshot identifying her as a suspect wanted for murder.

Angela hitchhikes to Cathedral's office in San Francisco where she uses her impostor's computer and finds that the Praetorians and Jeff Gregg use the same IP Address. She copies the evidence of the backdoor and Gregg's involvement with the Praetorians to a floppy disk and uses a Cathedral computer at a Tech Convention to send it to the FBI and Department of Justice.

Devlin and the Angela imposter catch her just as she sends the evidence but he is not worried because they have full access to the FBI computer systems and can erase anything she just sent. Devlin logs into Gatekeeper and presses the exit key but Angela had switched the disk in the drive to a program that Dale had sent her with a virus that is triggered by the exit key. The virus is released into Gatekeeper’s mainframe, destroying it and undoing the erasure of Angela’s identity. Devlin and the imposter chase Angela up to the catwalks of the Moscone Center. Devlin accidentally shoots and kills the impostor and Angela ambushes Devlin, causing him to fall to his death.

Angela regains her identity, her home, her mother and her life. The TV news reports two deaths at the Moscone Center, a young woman named Ruth Marx and an unidentified male. The news report credits Angela Bennett with exposing the criminal conspiracy and shows Jeff Gregg being arrested by the FBI.

Cast

[edit]

Production

[edit]

In October 1994, Bullock committed to filming The Net from mid-January through April 10, 1995.[6] The Net was filmed in San Francisco's Moscone Center on Thursday, January 5, 1995, during[7] Macworld[8][9] as well as at Washington, D.C., locations in April 1995.[10]

Reception

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Box office

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With an estimated budget of $22 million and a release date of July 28, 1995, The Net grossed $50.7 million in the United States and Canada. Including foreign markets, the film grossed $110.6 million worldwide.[1]

Critical response

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Based on 58 reviews, it has an average score of 5.3 out of 10 on Rotten Tomatoes with 43% of critics giving positive reviews. The site's consensus states: "The premise isn't without potential and Sandra Bullock is as likable as ever, but The Net lacks sufficient thrills – or plausible plot points – to recommend catching."[11] Metacritic, using a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 51 out of 100 based on 22 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[12] Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, describing The Net as basically an update of an Alfred Hitchcock trope ("Innocent Person Wrongly Accused"), which was in parts contrived but carried by Bullock's naturalistic performance.[13] Owen Gleiberman, writing for Entertainment Weekly, complimented Sandra Bullock's performance, saying, "Bullock pulls you into the movie. Her overripe smile and clear, imploring eyes are sometimes evocative of Julia Roberts".[14] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[15]

Sequel and spin-off TV series

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A sequel named The Net 2.0, starring Nikki DeLoach as Hope Cassidy and directed by Charles Winkler, son of Irwin Winkler, was announced in February 2005. It was released direct-to-video in 2006, and was about a young systems analyst who arrives in Istanbul for her new job, to find that her identity has been stolen.

The film spawned an American spinoff television series of the same name, starring Brooke Langton as Angela Bennett.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c "The Net". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved February 26, 2016.
  2. ^ "The Net". The Numbers. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
  3. ^ "The Net". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  4. ^ Sims, Chris (April 30, 2013). "What We Learned About Technology From 1995's The Net". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved June 27, 2021.
  5. ^ "The Net (1995)". movie mistakes .com.
  6. ^ "Thriller may 'Net' Actress Over $2 Million". Chicago Sun Times. October 24, 1994. p. 38. Archived from the original on June 11, 2014. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
  7. ^ Abate, Tom. "Megacrowd flocks to Macworld". sfgate.com. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
  8. ^
  9. ^ McKinney, Cait. "Can a Computer Remember AIDS?". Drain Magazine. Retrieved August 6, 2023. ISSN 2469-3022
  10. ^ Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith (March 1, 1995). "At Work On 2 Projects, Bullock Going Full-Speed Ahead". Los Angeles Daily News. p. L2. Archived from the original on June 11, 2014. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
  11. ^ "The Net". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 29, 2024.
  12. ^ "The Net". Metacritic. Retrieved May 6, 2022.
  13. ^ Ebert, Roger (July 28, 1995). "The Net review". rogerebert.com. Archived from the original on October 14, 2022. Retrieved October 14, 2022.
  14. ^ Owen Gleiberman (August 4, 1995). "'The Net' review at EW". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on April 28, 2014. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
  15. ^ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com.
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