True, "The Net" dresses up its plot with a trendy front end, by using the Internet as a hook. The Bullock character, named Angela Bennett, is a shy, reclusive intellectual who, in the old days, would have been a librarian or a schoolmarm. In "The Net," she's a computer professional who sits at home for days on end, testing new software.
For fun, she visits the chat rooms of online services, or orders pizza by modem.
One day, a good friend (who she has never seen face to face) clues her in to a strange page on the World Wide Web. It seems to be devoted to Mozart, but when you click the little Pi symbol on the lower right hand corner, while holding down the Control and Option keys, suddenly you're rocketed into top-secret government files. The friend offers to fly down to talk with her about his discovery, but dies in a plane crash.
Angela already has decided to take her first vacation in years, and in Mexico she meets a goodlooking guy named Devlin (Jeremy Northam), and falls for him. This Devlin is a smooth customer; he even ties his handkerchief around her midriff to keep off the cool night air, just like Cary Grant's character named Devlin did in Hitchcock's "Notorious." What he's actually after is a computer disc she has - a disc that would expose the secret of a scam to sell computer "security" programs to big customers. To dramatize the need for such security, Devlin's employers have tied up LAX, screwed up Wall Street, put six Chicago banks out of business and caused the suicide of a high government official.
That's the part of the plot that more or less holds together. The rest consists of a series of excuses for the director, Irwin Winkler, to place Bullock in situations well known to Hitchcock heroes. The computer programmer is, in essence, Hitchcock's favorite character: the Innocent Person Wrongly Accused. She's stripped of her identity through the manipulation of computer files, her apartment is taken away, she's given a police record, her only friend (Dennis Miller) runs into big trouble and, yes, she even gets involved in a deadly catand-mouse game on a merrygo-round.
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