The Tangled Web We Weave

Depending on how much you like Sandra Bullock, her newest picture The Net is either a) a deep philosophical look at one woman who has questions about the meaning of her own existence; or b) a thriller which aptly points out that sometimes we are being followed by more than just that little electronic shadow our computerized world has cast upon us.

As we move more and more into a world where people's memories are stored in megabytes on their hard drives rather than the electronic synaptic connections inside their brains, our reliance on what we know and what we remember and who has access to our most private information is a political and moral issue that needs to be focused upon. In our society, it is becoming more difficult to go anywhere or do anything without having to deal with information stored on a computer. Checking into a motel, bank transactions, reserving airline tickets, paying a restaurant bill, checking into a hospital, are all examples of activities that have become standardized and computerized. The amount of information about any single individual found in many separate though sometimes linked databases is staggering.

Thus the premise of The Net is that Bullock's character, Angela Bennett, finds herself in a whole lot of trouble when she accidentally stumbles upon a program that allows the villains access to any of the world's databases, with the ability to change and control information. Bennett, a computer program analyst, becomes the target of the villains who erase her existence in key databases creating a nonperson, as they try to kill her in the physical sense of the word too.

The suspense created by all the computereze is actually pretty good. Having personally come off a week where an ATM machine confiscated my cash card telling me I was committing an "unauthorized use" of my account, the movie struck a nerve. Worried that someone had gained access to my checking account and my vast fortune of twenty six bucks, I called my bank. The customer service representative checked the Norwest database, and found no discrepancies that should have flagged my card's abduction, yet I had my card taken away nonetheless. She could offer no explanation at what might have caused the error. I was assured a new card would be mailed shortly, not to worry about my money, and given an apology for the inconvenience. Inconvenience? Not having cash? No problem.

The Net falls apart however because it becomes this year's version of last year's annoying chase movie, The Firm. We get Sandra being chased on the beach; Sandra being chased at an amusement park; Sandra being chased at a crowded convention; Sandra being chased on the Santa Monica freeway; and finally Sandra being chased on a rooftop. She has men chasing her, women chasing her, and the law chasing her. After awhile, you want to tell her to stop her damn running and deal with the creeps face to face.

Bullock has received good reviews for her work in the movie. As in her other roles, she comes across as a likable actress. Whatever way The Net succeeds, it is due mainly in part because of her screen presence. There are a few suspenseful moments that get the old thrillmometer creeping ever so high. Unfortunately, it isn't until Bullock does stop running and begins to use her knowledge of computers that the movie hits its own stride of sorts. There is a point being made somewhere in the story about our proceeding in a computer reliant world without addressing some really important moral and data privacy issues. Who controls information will control the future. Ultimately the movie argues that computers can be fixed, but the human mind cannot. Bullock stumbles or rather runs into this revelation by which time even her spunky charm has been overrun by cliche.