I’ve seen the trailer for The Net (1995) a zillion times but never actually watched it from start to finish, and now having seen it, I almost didn’t need to. This is the definition of an average two star movie – watchable enough, but nothing that really sticks to your MEMORY dot RAM etc, zing. As a post-Speed star vehicle for Sandra Bullock, it works because you’d like to see her star in something better (reminder: I should finally check out Murder By Numbers, huh?). Bullock plays a lonely computer expert who specialises in finding viruses in games, all from the confines of her spacious house. While doing a favour for a friend, she stumbles across a hidden link and becomes embroiled in a shadowy conspiracy. Smash cut montage of Virus Warnings, random digital images and crunchy static on the soundtrack. While holidaying in Mexico, she also becomes acquainted with a debonair Brit (Jeremy Northam) who might be a romantic interest if he wasn’t also a computer hacker assassin (and as it turns out, not very good at his job). Aside from the dated hacker tech (Sandy B debugging Wolfenstein 3D and then ordering a pizza online through Pizza.Net in the opening is the highpoint of this) and the heightened techno-fear (monologues about how “everything, our whole lives are in the computer” and a lingering close up of the hospital computer monitor that our hero smashes in defiance), this is standard 1990s thriller stuff, a pale floppy disc copy of The Fugitive, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, etc (Boot up the Grisham_Thriller.exe program and hit ‘Start’). Our plucky heroine keeps turning to people for help who either turn out to be hidden agents or are doomed to meet with an unfortunate accident. Also, The Net takes us back to the era where comedian Dennis Miller would act in things (he plays an old flame of Bullock’s, a therapist who she had an affair with, the type who can’t help make wisecracks even when she’s clearly in distress). Ultimately, much like a bad dial-up connection, The Net leaves you hanging, even the final showdown between Bullock and Northam is resolved in a way that leaves you asking, “Ah, that’s it, then?” Prosaic airport novel fare without being actually based on an airport novel. In comparison, for all its flaws, Hackers stands out as even more imaginative and dynamic with its wild swings at net-based culture. The Net: rented on iTunes. Only apply if you’re Bullock-head and a lover of outdated tech-fear thrillers.
VHS Tracking 