The Net

Even when The Net goes off-line, Bullock's captivating presence is a screen saver. [28 July 1995, p.6]

This stuff is so concocted I had no business caring about it. But I did, because of Bullock. Read full review

The Net is an efficient, workmanlike thriller that, at its best, does a canny job of exploiting the more fanciful edges of computer-age dread. Read full review

The Net is a scary film that could have been terrifying but for something slightly earnest and plodding in director Irwin Winkler's attack. Read full review

It's exciting and satisfying, even if the chief villain isn't terribly original and the chase scenes are overlong. Bullock is plucky and believable as an average person who must marshal her strength and smarts to get her life back. Read full review

This paranoid fantasy is so resonant that it makes The Net an enjoyably creepy thriller, even though Irwin Winkler belongs to the nothing-is-too-obvious school of directing. Read full review

The Net starts off strong but finishes weak, and if not for the presence of actress Sandra Bullock, who graces nearly every scene, this movie might have been a snoozer. Read full review

A thoroughly conventional exercise in pop paranoia with trendy appurtenances, The Net has little to offer outside of Bullock's moderately appealing presence. Read full review

With admirable techno-savvy, the film upgrades the paranoia-propelled thriller and downloads it into the '90s. Reminiscent of a slew of films, including The Pelican Brief and The Fugitive, The Net - ploddingly directed by Irwin Winkler - is frustratingly average in almost every other respect, however. [28 July 1995, p.5D]

The Net entertains but is unlikely to hang around on the cerebral hard disk for too long. Read full review

Riddled with more coincidences and implausibilities than Hitchcock permitted himself in his entire career, The Net still gets by as a reasonably suspenseful, very au courant thriller. Read full review

Steeped in high-tech paranoia, Winkler's film has a nice kinetic energy, effectively portraying the extent to which computers have become an intrinsic part of our lives. The screenplay, however, for which Winkler shares credit with four others, feels like watered-down John Grisham. [24 July 1995]

Irwin Winkler's The Net, which should have worked a lot better than it does, is a glossy, intricately plotted, mostly implausible suspense movie about a woman on the run. Read full review

That anyone manages to care remotely about what's going on despite all this is a tribute to Bullock's appeal. She remains a disarmingly winning performer, though here she's saddled with some clunky, cliched bits of behavior. Read full review

Yes, it creaks. It creaks mightily. But The Net cheerfully plugs along, asking you to swallow one whopper after the next without burping. [28 July 1995, p.6G]

Despite Angela's skills - and Bullock's charms - director Irwin Winkler's film is so pedestrian that his movie has all the thrills of a school crossing. Read full review

Because the story is neither truly clever nor totally plausible - frequently, in fact, it's barely coherent - the film fails to deliver very many scares. [28 July 1995, p.L28]

Writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris must figure the blinking lights on Angela's screen will cloud our brains. They ask us to ignore plotholes the size of craters... Nor does director Irwin Winkler shoot scenes suspensefully. [28 July 1995, p.9F]

Winkler is a singularly boring director, forever telegraphing his scenes by tracking the camera behind a rustling bush or pulling the lens up close on his villain's eyes or gun. As a result, the film feels enervated and predictable when it should be energetic and surprising. It's a testimony to the abilities of the perky Bullock that she's entirely believable, but even she can't paper over the movie's many holes of logic. [28 July 1995]

This summer Bullock is in the driver's seat of The Net, a sort of chase movie on the information highway from veteran producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler, and not only is the film a comedown, it's a far less flattering showcase for her talents as well. Read full review

The movie's suspense derives from figuring out how wide the evil net has been cast. But in terms of suspense, this Net is full of holes. Read full review

The problem is that producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler (Night and the City, Guilty by Suspicion) simply has no idea what he's doing. I take that back. He knows what a producer ought to know: how to latch onto a hot topic and a hot star. Winkler also appears to have picked up enough from the directors he has worked with to give his film a certain second-hand slickness. Read full review