''The Net'' is a 1995 American

action thriller film Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life ...

directed by Irwin Winkler and starring

Sandra Bullock Sandra Annette Bullock (; born July 26, 1964) is an American actress and producer. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, Bullock was the world's highest-paid actress in 2010 and 2014. In 2010 ...

Jeremy Northam Jeremy Philip Northam (born 1 December 1961) is an English actor and singer. After a number of television roles, he earned attention as Mr. Knightley in the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Austen's '' Emma''. He has appeared in the films '' An Ide ...

, and

Dennis Miller Dennis Michael Miller (born November 3, 1953) is an American talk show host, political commentator, sports commentator, actor, and comedian. He was a cast member of '' Saturday Night Live'' from 1985 to 1991, and he subsequently hosted a str ...

. The film was released on July 28, 1995.

Plot

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

systems analyst A systems analyst, also known as business technology analyst, is an information technology (IT) professional who specializes in analyzing, designing and implementing information systems. Systems analysts assess the suitability of information syst ...

and

remote work Remote work, also called work from home (WFH), work from anywhere, telework, remote job, mobile work, and distance work is an employment arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, ware ...

er in

Venice, California Venice is a neighborhood of the city of Los Angeles within the Westside region of Los Angeles County, California. Venice was founded by Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a seaside resort town. It was an independent city until 1926, when it was annexed by ...

for Cathedral Software in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

. Her interpersonal 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 Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As ...

and often forgets who Bennett is. Bennett's co-worker, Dale, sends her a

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...

of the game "Mozart's Ghost" with a backdoor labeled " π" that permits access to a commonly used computer security system called "Gatekeeper" sold by Gregg Microsystems, a software company led by CEO Jeff Gregg. Dale and Bennett agree to meet, but the navigation system in Dale's private aircraft malfunctions and it crashes into a tower, killing him. Bennett travels to

Cozumel Cozumel (; yua, Kùutsmil) is an island and municipality in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, opposite Playa del Carmen. It is separated from the mainland by the Cozumel Channel and is close to the Yucat� ...

on vacation, where she meets Jack Devlin. After seducing Bennett, Devlin pays a mugger to steal her purse as they walk along the beach. He chases the mugger into the foliage, catches the mugger, and roots through the purse to find the disk before shooting the mugger. He takes Bennett out on his speedboat to kill her as well, but she finds his gun and confronts him. While fleeing with the disk and Devlin's wallet, Bennett's

dinghy A dinghy is a type of small boat, often carried or towed by a larger vessel for use as a tender. Utility dinghies are usually rowboats or have an outboard motor. Some are rigged for sailing but they differ from sailing dinghies, whic ...

collides with rocks. She is unconscious in the hospital for three days. When Bennett wakes up, she finds that the disk was ruined by the sun and all records of her life have been deleted: She was checked out of her hotel room in Cancun, her car is no longer at the airport parking lot, and her credit cards are invalid. Bennett's home is now empty and listed for sale. Moreover, because none of the neighbors remember her, they cannot confirm her identity. Bennett's

Social Security number In the United States, a Social Security number (SSN) is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary (working) residents under section 205(c)(2) of the Social Security Act, codified as . The number is issued to ...

is now assigned to a "Ruth Marx", for whom Devlin has entered an arrest record by using the Gatekeeper backdoor to hack the police computer system. When Bennett calls her own desk at Cathedral Software, an imposter answers and offers Bennett her old life back in exchange for the disk. She contacts the only other person who knows her by sight, psychiatrist and former lover Alan Champion. He checks her into a hotel, offers to contact a friend at the FBI, and arranges to have her mother moved for her safety. Using her knowledge of the backdoor and a password found in Devlin's wallet, Bennett logs into the Bethesda Naval Hospital's computers and learns that Under Secretary of Defense Bergstrom, who had opposed Gatekeeper's use by the federal government, was murdered by altering the results of his HIV test leading to a misdiagnosis. Fellow hacker "Cyberbob" connects π with the "Praetorians", a notorious group of

cyberterrorist Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. Acts of deliberate, la ...

s linked to recent computer failures around the country. Bennett and Cyberbob plan to meet, but the Praetorians intercept their online chat. Bennett escapes from Devlin—a

contract killer Contract killing is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or persons. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of payment, monetary or otherwise. Either party may be ...

for the cyberterrorists, but the Praetorians kill Champion by tampering with pharmacy and hospital computer records. After Bennett is arrested by the

California Highway Patrol The California Highway Patrol (CHP) is a state law enforcement agency of the U.S. state of California. The CHP has primary patrol jurisdiction over all California highways and roads and streets outside city limits, and can exercise law enforcem ...

, a man identifying himself as Champion's FBI friend frees her from jail. She realizes he is an imposter and escapes again. Now wanted for murder and thought to be Ruth Marx, Bennett hitchhikes to Cathedral's office where, using her imposter's computer, she connects the cyberterrorists to Gregg Microsystems and uncovers their scheme: once the Praetorians sabotage an organization's computer system, Gregg sells Gatekeeper to it and gains unlimited access through the backdoor. Bennett

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

s evidence of the backdoor and Gregg's involvement with the Praetorians to the FBI from the

Moscone Center The George R. Moscone Convention Center (pronounced ), popularly known as the Moscone Center, is the largest convention and exhibition complex in San Francisco, California. The complex consists of three main halls spread out across three block ...

and tricks Devlin into releasing a

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsk ...

into Gregg's mainframe, destroying Gatekeeper and undoing the erasure of her identity. During a battle on the catwalks of the convention center, in which Devlin accidentally kills the Bennett imposter from Cathedral Software (the real Ruth Marx), Bennett ambushes Devlin with a fire extinguisher, causing him to fall to his death. Bennett regains her identity, home, and life. She then reunites with her mother, and the conspiracy is exposed, with Jeff Gregg being arrested by the FBI, live on television.

Cast

Production

In October 1994, Bullock committed to filming ''The Net'' from mid-January through April 10, 1995. ''The Net'' was filmed in San Francisco's

and

Macworld ''Macworld'' is a website dedicated to products and software of Apple Inc., published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG Inc. It started life as a print magazine in 1984 and had the largest audited circulation (both total and newsstand) of Macin ...

on January 5, 1995, as well as at Washington, D.C., locations in April 1995.

Reception

Box office

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

Critical response

Based on 54 reviews, it has an average score of 5.3 out of 10 on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

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." Metacritic, using a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 51 out of 100 based on 22 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

gave the film three out of four stars, describing ''The Net'' as basically an update of an

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...

trope ("Innocent Person Wrongly Accused"), which was in parts contrived but carried by Bullock's naturalistic performance.

Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for '' Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...

, writing for ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular ...

'', 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 Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. Known for her leading roles in films encompassing a variety of genres, she has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and th ...

". Audiences polled by

CinemaScore CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data. Background Ed Mintz founded Ci ...

gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Sequel and spin-off TV series

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 ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

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 Brooke Langton (born November 27, 1970) is an American actress. She had significant guest roles on the NBC series '' Friday Night Lights'' and on ''Life'', in which Langton played a district attorney. She found early success on '' The Net'' (19 ...

as Angela Bennett.

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Net (1995 film), The 1995 films 1995 action thriller films 1990s chase films 1990s mystery thriller films American action thriller films American chase films American mystery thriller films Columbia Pictures films Films about identity theft Films about miscarriage of justice Films about murderers Films about technological impact Films about the Internet Films adapted into television shows Films directed by Irwin Winkler Films produced by Irwin Winkler Films scored by Mark Isham Films set in Los Angeles Films set in Mexico Films set in San Francisco Films set in the San Francisco Bay Area Films set in Washington, D.C. Films shot in San Francisco Films shot in Washington, D.C. HIV/AIDS in American films Malware in fiction Techno-thriller films Films about computer hacking 1990s English-language films 1990s American films