The Net

A RECLUSIVE COMPUTER SYSTEMS ANALYST IS CAUGHT IN A WEB OFINTRIGUE AND DANGER WHEN SHE UNWITTINGLY FINDS THE SECRET BEHINDA POPULAR COMPUTER SECURITY PROGRAM. IT'S PROGRAMMERS HAVECREATED A BACK DOOR, ENABLING THEM TO TAP INTO CLASSIFIED COMPUTER SYSTEMS.

The Net, the first of Hollywood's big cyberthrillers of the mid-1990s, was also the most successful, thanks in large part to the natural appeal of star Sandra Bullock. Still riding high from Speed and While You Were Sleeping, Bullock plays a computer expert victimized by sinister cyberforces who steal her identity for reasons unknown. It's a clever combination of high-tech paranoia and Hitchcockian references (including Jeremy Northam as a romantic stranger named Devlin, after Cary Grant in Notorious). Film historians may look back someday on films like this--Roger Ebert calls them "hacksploitation"--to see what they reveal about our society's reaction to the increasing role of technology in our lives, just as we now study the fears of Communism and the atom bomb reflected in films of the 1950s. Dennis Miller and Diane Baker costar. --Jim Emerson