The Net

Angela Bennett’s a software engineer type who works from home and has few friends outside of cyberspace..

• Director:Irwin Winkler
• Genre:Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller
• Runtime:110 minutes

Cast

Sandra Bullock : Angela Bennett
Jeremy Northam : Jack Devlin
Dennis Miller : Dr. Alan Champion
Diane Baker : Mrs. Bennett
Wendy Gazelle : Ruth Marx

Under Secretary of Defense Michael Bergstrom commits suicide after taking an HIV test and finding out that he tested positive.

Angela Bennett (Bullock) is a software programmer whose life so completely revolves around computers that she rarely ever has to leave her house in Los Angeles. The company that she works for, Cathedral Software, is located in another city (San Francisco) and she works from home; even simple tasks like ordering dinner are done via the internet. Her interpersonal relationships are also internet-chat exclusive, limiting her interaction with neighbors in her own community. This is partially triggered by Angela’s sadness over her Alzheimer’s suffering mother (Diane Baker).

Then we see Angela Bennett testing a new video game (Wolfenstein 3D). The game is apparently infected with a virus which gets activated when one presses the Escape key. The person with whom she’s speaking on the speakerphone “wants to get it on store shelves by week’s end”. She uses various tools to remove the virus from the game, but she saves a copy of it to a floppy disk. She then sends the disk to Dale, a friend of hers who collects viruses and works on-site at her company.

When Dale sends Angela a new game on disk called Mozart’s Ghost, they discover that it contains a backdoor to a new computer security software system, called the Gatekeeper, that is being installed on major government and military systems across the globe. Using the correct keystroke (control+shift + click the pi logo), it is possible to gain completely open access to the system in question. Dale, who is at the moment flying in his private Cessna airplane set on autopilot, explains that he “accessed Amtrak and the Mayo Clinic” and that the disk is very dangerous. They agree to meet in person (for the first time) to discuss the issue further, but no sooner does Angela make these plans than Dale’s plane suddenly crashes. Read more

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