The Wayback Machine: Sandra Bullock’s The Net Still Holds Up
We learn that Sandra Bullock had an affair with Dennis Miller. (-2) She explains how her life was erased using the insidious power of a nascent Web:
Our whole lives are on the computer, and they knew! They knew that I could be vanished!
Yeah… not in 1995. (-1)
Angela gets access to a laptop and visits the site on the card in the hacker’s wallet. Like so:
The computer (with a resolution of about 400×200 (+1)) brings her to a Swiss site that talks to her (-1) and, which a press of the spacebar, brings up a terminal window that allows her to telnet. (-2) Meanwhile, Devlin is tracing her connection while driving (-3) and we see a target pop up over Switzerland. (-2)
(I’m not getting into the other goofy details, like why the Undersecretary’s medical records contain his official portrait. You may mock those as you wish.)
What’s-her-face then starts up her chat window, to try and find someone to help her. She does a WHOIS on each chat participant (-1), and gets information like this:
Bad news, perverts! Your chat records tell all! Even your out-of-range IP address (-1) and web location. Happily, however, you are listed as being in Canada (.ca) although you’re in California (CA). (-2) Angela arranges, in a private chat, to meet Cyberbob IRL. (+1 for early chat abbreviation usage!)
Devlin finds her, knows what she’s up to, and goes to kill Cyberbob for no good reason. Cyberbob helpfully keeps a sticker of his chat avatar next to the buzzer of his door. (-1)
Angela escapes with Dennis Miller, casually referring to the need to access a mainframe and remove traps; he nods, understanding. (-1) She also tells him about the “internet number” she “plugged in” to the Swiss website. (-2) He subsequently dies because the Net messed up his prescription or something, thus sparing Monday Night Football viewers a few years down the line. At the hospital, we see a sinister shot of a camera in the corner – in 1995, it seems, hospital security cameras were all online! (-2)
She meets Devlin at the Santa Monica Pier, and affects an escape on the merry-go-round. Even though it worked here – protip: rides that go in circles are a bad choice for escaping. Also, protip: shooting at someone riding on a carousel is also dumb.
A few times in here we see a screen of data about Ruth Marx (Angela’s new name) (Angela being Bullock) that is accessible in both a police car and at the hospital. It looks like this:
In 1995, cops were able to look up whether or not you had been treated for venereal diseases, which seems useful. (-10)
(At about this point, with 40 minutes left in the movie, I got bored.)
Angela steals a car and decides to drive from LA to San Francisco the longest possible way – via the Pacific Coast Highway. (+2, I guess, since she obviously had no GPS) She is stopped by the police and arrested. She tells the public defender,
Our whole world is in the computer. Just think about it. There’s this little electronic shadow on each and every one of us just begging for somebody to screw with and you know what? They’re gonna do it to you.
Thus is the movie summarized.
She escapes jail because someone lies to her, and then because of a drawbridge. (-1) She then learns she’s wanted on “Federal charges of car theft.” (-7)
Eventually, she gets to Cathedral, her employer, where someone pretending to be her has taken her seat. No one, it seems, asked why Angela Bennett, who worked from home in LA, has moved to San Francisco and requested a desk. But that’s what happened.
NEXT: The point total, explained.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
