The Net (film)
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| The Net | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover for The Net |
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| Directed by | Irwin Winkler |
| Produced by | Rob Cowen Irwin Winkler |
| Written by | John Brancato Michael Ferris |
| Starring | Sandra Bullock Jeremy Northam Dennis Miller Christopher Lloyd Gilbert Gottfried |
| Music by | Mark Isham Jeff Rona |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1995 |
| Running time | 114 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Net is a 1995 film directed by Irwin Winkler and starring Sandra Bullock, Jeremy Northam and Dennis Miller. The storyline is based on the public fear of Big Brother in United States. The film was followed by a short lived television series in 1998 and a direct-to-video sequel, The Net 2.0, in 2006. Only the TV series has continuity with the original film.
[edit] Plot
Bullock plays Angela Bennett, a computer technician whose life so completely revolves around computers that she rarely ever has to leave her house. The company that she works for is located in another city (San Francisco) and she works from home; even simple tasks like ordering dinner are done via the internet. Her interpersonal relationships are also internet-chat exclusive, which has limited her interaction with real people in her own community. This is partially triggered by Angela's sadness over her Alzheimer's suffering mother (Diane Baker).
The movie starts out with a Michael Bergstrom committing suicide.
Then we see Angela Bennett testing a new video game. The game is apparently infected with a virus. The person with whom she's speaking on the speakerphone "wants to get it on store shelves by week's end". She uses various tools to extract the virus from the game, but she saves a copy of it to a floppy disk. She then sends the disk to Dale, a friend of hers who collects viruses and works on-site at her company.
When Dale sends Angela a new game on disk, they unknowingly discover a backdoor to a new computer security software system that is being installed on major government and military systems across the globe. Using the correct keystroke, it is possible to gain completely open access to the system in question. Dale explains that he "accessed Amtrak and the Mayo Clinic" and that the disk is very dangerous. They agree to meet in person (for the first time) to discuss the issue further, but no sooner does Angela make these plans with him than he dies in an airplane accident due to (intentionally) damaged avionics on his private plane.
On the day after the accident, Angela begins a trip to Cozumel, Mexico where she meets a handsome British man named Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam). We see Angela on the beach with her laptop, where she is working on the program containing the backdoor.
Jack sweeps Angela off her feet; they seem to have everything in common, including the same favourite cocktail (a Gibson, which is a Martini made with onions). On one evening Jack even protects Angela from a mugging where her purse is stolen. The two set out on a boat for a romantic evening which leads to lovemaking. When Jack steps away, Angela puts on his jacket and discovers a gun. She confronts him.
Jack reveals that he was actually sent by an internet terrorist group known as the Praetorians. He has been stalking her on the internet to find out all of her likes/dislikes so that he could seduce her. He quotes her exact words from a chat conversation we saw earlier in the movie. They intend for him to retrieve the disc in question and kill her. A struggle ensues. Angela knocks Jack out and retrieves his wallet which contains the disk. Angela escapes on a motorboat only to crash into some rocks. When she awakes she is in a Mexican hospital and she learns that the disk was damaged by the water and the sun.
Angela now begins to discover what's happened to her. The hotel desk informs her that she has already checked out. She goes to customs to try and return home, applying for a temporary visa (as her passport was stolen along with her purse, a theft which turns out to have been arranged by Jack). The woman at customs presents Angela with a temporary visa form with the wrong name on it. Desperate to return home Angela signs the name next to her photo on the application: "Ruth Marx."
When Angela gets home in the evening she finds her house is completely empty. She is startled by a real estate agent who thinks she is a late straggler for an open-house viewing and offers to show her the property.
The police are called in but no one can identify Angela as the resident of the house. A neighbour is brought in but she has never met Angela; a woman claiming to be Angela came and arranged for the possessions to be moved out and for the sale of the house. Angela realizes something very serious is going on and so, and the police ask for her identification. She gives them the "Ruth Marx" visa, and one of the cops goes to call it in.
Angela escapes through the bathroom just as the cop is coming back to arrest her. He has run "Ruth Marx" through the system; it brings up outstanding warrants for her arrest for things like prostitution and theft (with Angela's photograph). During her confrontation with the police, we saw Jack in a car, using a laptop and cell phone, editing the file for "Ruth Marx" adding various criminal offenses and outstanding warrants. (It's implied that he used the Gatekeeper backdoor to access this system to perform these edits.) Angela begins to wander the streets; she stole the real estate agent's cellular phone. She calls her workplace hoping to find someone who can identify her, but when saying that it is "Angela Bennett calling" she is transferred TO Angela Bennett, or more precisely, someone posing as her.
The fake Angela has begun working at the company's location and advises the real Angela to "give us the disc and we'll give you back your life." Angela, in a complete panic, contacts her friend and former lover (and also former therapist) Alan Champion (Dennis Miller), the only person she can think of who knows her by sight. With Jack hot on her tail (he's triangulated the location of the cellular she was using), the skeptical Alan puts Angela up in a hotel.
Angela utilizes the internet to uncover the master plan of the Praetorians, which involves the death of a homophobic senator whose medical records they altered to show that he was HIV positive. She manages to make contact with an online acquaintance, "Cyberbob," who agrees to meet her somewhere in public. Jack hones in on this online chat and kills "Cyberbob," taking his place and trying to kidnap Angela. She manages to evade him long enough to witness Alan die and then try to escape the police in Alan's beamer which she crashes in an attempt lose the cops.
After being framed as a thief, she is thrown in jail, but a supposed FBI agent rescues her. She discovers that the agent is another of Jack's tricks, and she manages to escape from him.
Next day she decides to go to her workplace, where the fake Angela Bennett is working. After Angela sets off a fake fire-alarm, the entire building is evacuated, she starts tracking the real identity of the Praetorians: Jeff Gregg, President of the company who creates the software that started everything. She performs a network search to prove the identity of the masked "PRAETORIAN" nickname is indeed Jeff Gregg himself. She saves all the evidence on a floppy disk, and goes to a computer convention, to get away from the returning "Angela" - she just narrowly escapes in time, and in fact left the "save as" dialog on screen, which prompts "Angela" to call Jack and pursue the real Angela.
Once at the convention, she visits the booth featuring her company, and uses the computer to send E-mail to an FBI address. She sends a copy of the diskette's contents to the FBI along with a message explaining her situation. Jack finds her at the booth and attempts to login to the FBI to delete the message she's just sent, but Angela tricks Jack into instead releasing a virus into the mainframe - the same virus exhibited at the start of the movie, which was left in "Angela's" desk. While Jack is distracted trying to stop the virus from destroying the entire server network for the Praetorians, Angela escapes and after a chase, confronts Jack, knocking him off a high walkway, sending him to his death.
At home, Angela watches a news broadcast showing the arrest of the ring leader of the Praetorians.
[edit] Trivia
- In Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 thriller Notorious, the male lead, Devlin, is played by Cary Grant. In one scene he ties a bandana around Ingrid Bergman's waist; Jack Devlin does the same to Angela Bennett.
- The Gibson cocktail which Angela Bennett drinks is also ordered by Cary Grant's character Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest. This is notable as Bennett and Thornhill are both innocent characters on the run.
[edit] External links
- The Net at the Internet Movie Database
