This film somehow oddly feels even more dated than pictures made in the Fifties and Sixties. Probably because we're inundated with so much technology these days that floppy discs and dial up modems seem almost ancient. And I'm not even a tech geek when it comes to computers, I know just enough about them to come here and write a review. This movie would have had a much bigger impact over two decades ago when it first came out; today, much of what occurs in the film seems like a distraction. The scary part of the story's premise is even more palpable today though. With a handful of keystrokes, anyone's life can be made miserable at the hands of one person bent on creating havoc. Just find yourself on the wrong side of a Yelp business review and you'll know what I'm talking about. Anyway, the film has it's moments of intrigue and danger, going full circle to connect the dots from the opening suicide of a high ranking government official to a vast conspiracy involving a cyber security firm with dubious motives. If nothing else, Sandra Bullock makes for an eye appealing protagonist.

THE NET is one of those 1990s-era technology-based thrillers that must have felt dated on release. Watching characters using DOS-based systems and dial-up modems must be quite bizarre for anyone used to today's smartphone and nano technology; this alone dates the film more than anything made in the '60s or '70s. Other than that, this is an ultra-cheesy and rather silly Hollywood kind of thriller, a film which plays it safe and is littered with so many goofs and plot holes that you end up losing count of them before long. Sandra Bullock plays another stupid protagonist, supposedly a computer genius but also a person who is unable to figure out that a stock British bad guy (who might as well have VILLAIN tattooed on his forehead) is, well, bad. What follows is join-the-dots plotting and laughable suspense situations. It's all completely unbelievable, and very difficult to take seriously for a modern viewer.

Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a software beta test consultant. She's a homebody with few friends outside of cyberspace. She collects computer viruses for her friend Dale Hessman. She visits her mom (Diane Baker) in an old age home but she doesn't remember her. Dale sends her a program that seems to access unauthorized sites and then he's killed. She goes on vacation and meets Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam) who turns out to be a cold-hearted killer looking for the program. She barely escapes the attempt on her life and computers are going wrong giving her an alternate identity Ruth Marx. Her life is taken over by Devlin and she's pursued by the police. The only person she can turn to is Dr. Alan Champion (Dennis Miller) who actually knows her in real life.

The question is why not just kill her. That seems to be the objective from before. Of course, he's trying to date her. If they want to know who she talked to, why not kidnap her? Torture is so much easier. Also why couldn't she make copies of the disk? Didn't she have access to the program in the hotel? There is a lot of stuff that is questionable even if the computer stuff is reasonable. The stuff surrounding the computer stuff makes little sense. Also the movie insists on killing people in the most complicated ways possible. And it seems like Bullock is always running in this movie.