Watch The Net For Free

You won't be disappointed!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Think back to 1995, did you even know what I.D. theft was? Well Michael Ferris and John Brancato did, and at the time, it wasn't really that scary. In the film, Sandra Bullock lives alone, spending most of her time fixing her company's computers online. She seems to rarely go out or socialize except with others by computer. She even orders her food over the computer, and it's delivered. Because she keeps to herself, hardly anyone knows her personally, and her mother is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's Disease, so she doesn't remember her. Her only friend is an ex boyfriend, who happens to be a psychiatrist, and she's broken up with him. The fact that she's so incognito has a lot to do with the film. Before leaving for her first vacation in years, she get's a call from a friend in her company who is confused about a weird disk that's come into his possession, and wants her to help him. Not willing to figure it out over the phone or on the computer, he tells her he needs to see her in person and he's flying to her home in L.A. He never arrives...The cast is great, with Sandra Bullock pulling out all the stops in her fight for what is right. There are no sex scenes, no violence or over-indulgent special effects, just content. Every movie lover should own a copy of this film as an example of how to make a film without over indulgence and heavy reliance on effect.. This is a film that can be viewed several times, with each time revealing a little more detail. There is less obvious comedy and glamour in this role, but Sandra Bullock is excellent and intense, as the woman fighting for her life, and ends on a happy note caring for her Mother, and with a new status, working from a new home. There were a lot of conspiracies in this movie, in my opinion its a film that makes you really think how controlled your life is by the internet. Very compelling story.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a computer program systems analyst who works from her home in Venice, California. Working for Cathedral Software, Angela identifies and removes viruses from her clients' computer systems. A recluse, she does all of her work by modem and telephone, and in her spare time enjoys playing computer games and visiting chat rooms, and when it is time to eat, orders pizzas on- line. Via FedEx, Angela mails to colleague Dale (Ray McKinnon), a friend who has never seen her, at Cathedral's office building a red diskette containing a virus that causes crashes. She specifically warns him not to strike the Escape key while this diskette is inserted into the hard drive. Previously Dale had sent a green diskette that alerts her to a program ("Gatekeeper") that propels her into top secret government databases, like the US Federal Reserve. This is accomplished by clicking on the pi (π) logo in the lower right corner of the screen while pressing the Control plus Shift keys. (Dale had created the Mozart's Ghost website that picked up a virus that transported him to Gatekeeper.) The bad guys modify data and raise havoc among government departments, airports, banks, etc. After they hack into agencies' computer systems to create chaos, they offer a solution by selling their "security software." But when the damaged party buys this security software, they unknowingly put themselves at risk to those who initially generated the problem! Dale wants to see Angela right away about the "glitch," but she explains that she has finally planned her first vacation in six years - to Mexico. He convinces her to see him before her departure, as he can fly to her location the following morning so they can finish business before noon. She agrees and copies the Gatekeeper website's programming code onto a diskette to further research the problem. But before they meet his small airplane strangely crashes (because of skullduggery), killing him instantly. At a Mexican beach with her laptop and diskette, Angela is approached by a slick dude, Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam). They strike up a conversation, which develops into friendship. Devlin, though, is devious. He is actually after the Gatekeeper computer diskette that Angela holds in her purse. Devlin works for the "Praetorians," the Gatekeeper syndicate that knows she has it (perhaps they monitored her computer transmissions in chat rooms). After her purse is stolen by a slimy thief hired by Devlin, whom he shoots to death, she escapes Devlin's clutches on a motorized raft. But she crashes into a rock, is knocked out, and ends up in a Mexican hospital. After three days she awakens and discovers her diskette was damaged because of water and sunlight exposure. Returning to her hotel, Angela discovers she had supposedly checked out earlier. As she has no identification, she goes to the American Embassy. There she is compelled to sign "Ruth Marx" to get a temporary visa. Her identity was stolen by the Praetorians, who have changed her name to one with a criminal record: larceny, illegal drug use, parole violations. Marx is wanted by the police. At least Angela can use the money she has from Devlin's wallet.Angela finally arrives at the LA airport to find her car missing. Eventually coming home, she finds it empty and for sale. She seeks help from her former psychiatrist and lover, Alan Champion (Dennis Miller), who checks her into a motel and tries to help her even though he believes her to be somewhat delusional. Because of her cloistered lifestyle, she has almost no interpersonal relationships and cannot prove her identity. Compounding the problem, her own mother (Diane Baker) has Alzheimer's disease so even she cannot identify Angela. Doesn't Angela have any other relatives or neighbors or doctors? Over much of the rest of the film, Angela is involved in a series of narrow escapes, especially from Devlin. There is a credibility problem here, as it is difficult to believe that such a recluse could continually elude a contract killer. But she does, and even escapes from police custody. Meanwhile Alan is chemically murdered in the hospital, leaving Angela alone. Eventually Angela hitch-hikes a ride to Cathedral's San Francisco office building, and uses an unoccupied workstation to smoke out Ruth Marx, the fake Angela. When she sets off the building's fire alarm systems, she learns of Marx's location, which she occupies. (But how did Marx ever position herself there?) Angela works into Cathedral's mainframe and inserts data that protects her true identity and deletes Marx's info. Successful there, Angela then finds the red diskette (virus) she earlier mailed to Dale. She quickly saves the details of the computer scam onto a blue diskette, and, with BOTH diskettes, departs to the advertised Pan Pacific Computer Convention at the Moscone Center. There, on a vacant computer at Cathedral's display booth, she sends the proof (blue diskette) exposing Gatekeeper to the US Department of Justice /FBI. Then she inserts the virus-containing red diskette into the drive as Devlin arrives and pushes her away. Not realizing that the red diskette is inserted, he strikes the Escape key, thinking that he has reversed Angela's work. But his action activates the virus that attacks Gatekeeper's mainframe. Angela escapes from him one final time as both he and Ruth Marx eventually die chasing her. In the end Angela gets Jeff Gregg, the top Praetorian, arrested and recovers her regular life. One needs to suspend his belief system and just enjoy the movie for what it is, as there is much technological impossibility, like clicking on π and getting into the Federal Reserve (!). Also, has anyone been at an airport and read "Crashed" or "Hijacked" on digital screens? However, Ms. Bullock's performance is splendid. Don't blame the film on twenty year-old technology: small computer screens, wide monitors, dial-up modems, and large cellphones. Twenty years from now what we have will also be obsolete.

The mid-1990's was an exciting time when the use of the Internet grew rapidly and it became obvious to everyone that it would soon affect virtually every area of human activity. Alongside the excitement, however, many anxieties were expressed about the potential dangers involved and many of these feature in this movie which presents the kind of nightmare scenario that many people feared. Identity theft, a breakdown of social interaction and cyber-terrorism were all recognised threats and are used to good effect in "The Net" to create a fast-moving thriller that was very topical at the time of its release but now inevitably looks dated.Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a computer analyst who works at her home in Venice, California where she identifies and eliminates viruses in programs that are sent to her by San Francisco software company, "Cathedral Systems". When one of her colleagues sends her a program that makes it easy to access and modify data held by government departments, airports, hospitals and banks etc, she's told that he'll soon be travelling down to her home to work with her on the program. Shortly after, he's killed in a plane crash and so she continues with her original plan to go on vacation to Mexico and takes her laptop and a disk containing the new program that she'd been asked to work on.In Mexico, she meets a smooth-talking man called Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam) who seduces her but is really only interested in stealing her disk and killing her. When this becomes obvious, Angela manages to escape but after returning home, discovers that her house has been put up for sale and her identity has been swapped with a woman called Ruth Marks who's apparently a criminal wanted by the police. It swiftly becomes evident that Angela's being pursued by a group of cyber-terrorists called "The Praetorians" and the police and can't prove her real identity because she has, for many years, led a reclusive lifestyle in which her only regular face-to-face contact was with her mother who has Alzheimer's disease.The only person that Angela knows who could confirm her identity is her ex-psychiatrist and ex-lover, Dr Alan Champion (Dennis Miller) and although he provides some help, he's soon prevented from getting Angela out of her nightmare and she remains on the run until she eventually confronts Devlin for the final time.There are plenty of chases and well-executed action sequences in "The Net" and Hitchcockian influences such as , the wrong man (woman) theme, the fairground motif and confused identities as well as a disk that becomes the MacGuffin, add extra interest. The power of the terrorists seems overwhelming and an atmosphere of paranoia prevails when amongst other things, the modification of key computer records result in the deaths of a prominent politician, a hospital patient and a software expert who's piloting a plane.The focus throughout the entire story is on Sandra Bullock's character and her skill in making herself convincingly introverted and work-obsessed plays a huge part in the success of this movie as she outshines everyone else who appears in it.

In an age when the internet is fairly new, computer expert Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) finds herself involved in a computer glitch after the information on her driver's license, credit cards, bank accounts and her identity have been erased unbeknown-st to her by a high security programming group known as the Praetorians. She is then given a new identify with a police record; therefore, she is on the rush to hide from the authorities, find her true identity, and locate the Praetorians, who want to obtain a disk containing confidential information from her.From Bennett struggling with the loss of her identity to her attempting to track down her real identity, all the while dodging the police and the Praetorians, this movie is full of the classic adventure, mystery, and thrills that keeps the plot going and the audience captivated.Many computer geeks would probably critique the ways the internet or computer programming were described or used in this film, but they should just put those tidbits aside and focus on the pure entertainment this movie brings. With some descent acting and quick action added onto the on-screen drama and mystery, this is actually a fun movie.Grade A