THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 2, 1995 TAG: 9508020634
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
``THE NET'' may send you rushing from the theater to check your bank account. You might pause to write your name and Social Security number on an old-fashioned sheet of paper - just to be sure there will be a record.
Capitalizing on a communal fear of the onrushing information age, ``The Net'' is a thriller in which a nice, lonely girl has her identity virtually wiped out by villains who have crashed into her computer records.
They take her driver's license.
They take her credit cards.
Ooops! That last abomination was probably enough to get your attention.
It's Internet hell.
Directed by Irwin Winkler, who is better as a producer (``Raging Bull,'' ``Rocky''), the movie's greatest virtue is its speed. It moves so fast that you aren't supposed to notice dozens of implausible turns, and some outright foolishness.
If they'd just slow down the movie, we might have time to wonder why no one else on the merry-go-round notices the heroine crawling around while someone shoots at her. We might wonder where she gets the money to pay for her hotel room. We might wonder how a recluse suddenly gets the savvy to negotiate a hostile world.
The weakness of the cyber-thriller, as an emerging film genre, may ultimately be that no matter how many car chases and shootings you add, you still have to type in the password if you want to get at the vital computer data. It's a tame finale.
The film is admirably served by the highly likable Sandra Bullock, an actress who urges us to root for her. She has a winning knack of comic self-doubt. Unlike the current crop of glamour girls, this former East Carolina University co-ed suggests a friendly movie star who might live next door. (And, after ``Speed'' and ``While You Were Sleeping'' she is, indeed, a star).
She plays Angela Bennett, a reclusive computer whiz whose only relative is a mother who has Alzheimer's and can't even remember her name. If you're going to wipe out someone's identity, she'd be a good choice.
The plot is nothing more than a variation on the old woman-in-jeopardy ploy that served Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck so often, and so well. Angela somehow gets a disk that has valuable information about how the villains tricked a Washington notable into committing suicide. She goes on vacation to Cancun and is picked up by a handsome Brit (Jeremy Northam) whom we know right away is up to no good.
Dennis Miller is her former shrink and, for a time, the only one who can help her. He doesn't bother to act; just shows up and is himself. Diane Baker, a fine actress who dates back to playing Anne Frank's sister in ``The Diary of Anne Frank,'' is largely wasted in her role as Angela's mother.
Of course, the conglomerate villains are creating computer glitches in the stock market and banks so that everyone will have to pay them for protection. Take away all the techno mumbo jumbo and you've got about the same racket that Al Capone ran.
For the most part, Winkler tries to copy Hitchcock in the staging of his chase scenes, but they are only serviceable.
It's a familiar thriller-movie plot hyped up with 1990s jargon.
Less brief than the similar ``Pelican Brief,'' ``The Net'' has two things going for it: Sandra Bullock and public paranoia. They are enough. by CNB