Two or Three Things about “The Net” (1995)
There’s an off kilter goofy joy to the opening scene about a devastated and suicidal senator. Him pleading the info he received isn’t accurate.
“Sure there wasn’t a mistake? A human error?
(Sighhhhhh) I guess that eliminates that possibility.
So this really is reality”.
It’s the forlorn, almost droopy dog like way, where he pathetically says that reality bit that gives it a camp charge.
Bonus points for the staging of his death; he puts a guy in his mouth, a statue in the near background that is screaming while in the ground, the camera pans up and the sound of his shot scatters the swans in the far background. Good stuff.
Even more bonus points for following up on the backstory later in the film. The villain planted a false positive for aids in the senator’s health report. “Everyone has a button to push. His was homophobia.”
The joy one may or may not receive from this film is from the levitating presence of Sandra Bullock. Her ways of being a radical 90s hacker chick to start has a goofy charm to them.
As the film goes it mixes in thriller tropes without conviction. Yet Bullock makes you care.
Legendary funny man Carl Reiner(a man unconnected to this picture otherwise) says this film convinces him that Bullock is a gift that he cannot stop watching. He seems pretty right on the money for this occasion
The film really seems to want to pile on preposterous conspiracy twists(including identity theft) at every turn, but is almost shy and restrained.
It might do to being a prototype of a fuller idea.
The writers revisited this idea with gusto in their following script for “The Game” (even using the same CBS news anchor Daniel Schorr for pivotal info scenes) and it was 400% better a picture for discarding logic.
Granted, David Fincher is also a wayyyyyyyyyy better director than Irwin Winkler.
Still the point stands, no idea is a failure, just an improvement along the way.^
^Back to our guy Carl Reiner, who worked a pilot rejected by CBS into the beloved “Dick Van Dyke Show”
“Mistakes are like gifts of gold. It’s ok to let the audience in on it. When you make a mistake, let them participate in it”
