Category Archives: science fiction

Sandra Bullock stars in one of the earlier (1995) “the internet will doom us all, but at least we can work from home in pajamas” thrillers. The technological conceit at the heart of The Net is surprisingly possible, albeit not quite in the form used–no single piece of security software will ever get to the necessary level of market share to do the damage envisioned in the film without being unmasked by the quite vigilant group of researchers tracking the security market.

Irwin Winkler, who was primarily a producer for 30 years before this on many big movies including the Rocky series and a number of Martin Scorsese’s films, made this his third directorial effort. The Net, though, was his first shot at a big box office event, following two smaller Robert De Niro dramas (Guilty by Association and Night and the City). The script came from the team of John Brancato and Michael Ferris, whose career is littered with sequels (Terminator 3 and the upcoming Terminator reboot, Catwoman) minor films that sound better on paper than on celluloid (The Game).

Bullock plays Angela Bennett, a nearly agoraphobic, mysanthropic top rank computer programmer. She works from home in Santa Monica (for a San Francisco software outfit), orders delivery rather cook, has a social life consisting of hanging out in a chat room with other geeks she’s never willing to meet IRL and ventures out mainly to dutifully visit her Alzheimer’s-wasted mom.

Angela decides to take her first vacation in six years a day after sending a friendly co-worker a new virus for his collection. Dale returns the favor but says he will fly down in his Cessna to talk about his find over breakfast before she leaves for Mexico. As he’s not arrived by the time she needs to head to LAX, Angela calls his office only to be told Dale dies when his plane crashed. We viewers, though, already knew it and also that the crash was caused by some chicanery to the Cessna.

On her vacation’s last morning, sitting out on the beach, Angela connects with a cute British guy named Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam, in a role that was probably turned down by Hugh Grant as too dark). This is no coincidence, though, as Devlin somehow is constantly exactly on the mark with every choice from favorite movie to dinner on a romantic powerboat followed, of course, by a night of passionate sex.

Jack, you see (and you would see, since Winkler and his writers telegraph nearly every move), is a ruthless mercenary only interested in retrieving that disk Dale sent Angela and making sure there are neither copies nor anyone else who knows of it’s contents. Those questions answered, and the sex finished, Jack’s ready to kill our heroine and dump her body somewhere off the coast of Cancun.

Angela realized this just before and was able to remove the bullets, though for some reason didn’t keep the loaded gun for herself. Anyway she knocks Jack silly with a wine bottle, disables the boat, dumps him overboard and makes her getaway in the main boat’s dinghy. Sadly, it wasn’t a clean getaway and she herself is knocked unconscious after running into some rocks. Her recovery in a local hospital provides Jack with the time to erase the computer existence of Angela Bennett.

On making her way home Angela finds her house emptied of it’s contents and a realtor holding an open house to sell it; unable to convince the realtor, a neighbor or a pair of patrol cops the house belongs to her or even that she really is Angela Bennett, she’s arrested and her life spirals further down.

But this woman is no wimp even if she is a nerd! No sir. And as good as her opponents’ computer skills may be, her’s are better and besides she has her former lover/psychiatrist (a feel good, wants to feel Angela again Dennis Miller) on her side.

You see, what Angela and Dale stumbled onto was nothing less than the attempt to subvert the entire business and government infrastructure of the United States by a group dedicated to taking down institutions that, well, just get too big for the general good. The Praetorians, Devlin’s employers, are lead by another very smart geek, not really seen much on screen or a character in this movie, but you can think of him as an evil Mitch Kapor or Larry Ellison. GateKeeper, his Trojan horse security software app, is gaining more and more marketshare while keeping it’s true purpose hidden.

Overall I think this is an entertaining 90 minutes because for 1993 or 94, when presumably the script was written, the core concepts are pretty insightful and while Winkler may not be a great director (see my review of his best received work, the 2001 Life as a House) he learned from Scorsese and other great ones while producing and knows how to keep the action moving and the plot on point.

mildly recommended

Released in 1995, essentially the eve of the World Wide Web’s unleashing, this is a fascinating mashup of hot teenage lust (Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie in her first lead role) and computer-based corporate blackmail. Watching it again after a dozen years I see many writers and directors copped bits and ideas for reuse in their own projects, but then again reuse is a holy grail of computer programming and hacking in its most positive sense so its not that bad.

Hackers uses the Robert Morris-authored computer worm of 1988 as its launching point, but transforming college student Morris into 11 year old prodigy Dade Murphy; fast forward seven years and Dade (Miller) and his mom (Alberta Watson) are relocating from Seattle to Manhattan for his senior year of high school. Kate Libby (Jolie) is the school office intern who turns out to be a budding hacker herself, and four male classmates complete their clique.

The main downside is the writers seemingly had a grasp of technology based on reading random computer product datasheets. At one point near the climax Penn Jillette, playing some sort of computer security analyst, starts screaming “They’re into the kernel! They’re into the kernel!” At another the teenage hacker boys are checking out Jolie’s laptop, throwing out features as if they were centerfold measurements.

Fisher Stevens, the villain of the piece, does come up with one sentiment that is totally absurd but allegedly an expression of the hacker mentality: “There is no more good or evil, there’s only fun and boring.” The technical details of the plot are on a similar level, but the tension, especially between Jolie and Miller, makes Hackers watchable.

recommended