I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

A Disappointing Continuation

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Almost 2 hours out of my life HAD I decided to keep watching. Boring and stupid. They could've and should've used ordinary people who've never been in a movie and it just might have been interesting. I found the expected kind of silliness in this boring BS filled time-waster! This review does not contain any spoilers as it has nothing in it worth spoiling except the exposing of silliness, especially in the woman Sandra Bullock.

Think back to 1995, did you even know what I.D. theft was? Well Michael Ferris and John Brancato did, and at the time, it wasn't really that scary. In the film, Sandra Bullock lives alone, spending most of her time fixing her company's computers online. She seems to rarely go out or socialize except with others by computer. She even orders her food over the computer, and it's delivered. Because she keeps to herself, hardly anyone knows her personally, and her mother is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's Disease, so she doesn't remember her. Her only friend is an ex boyfriend, who happens to be a psychiatrist, and she's broken up with him. The fact that she's so incognito has a lot to do with the film. Before leaving for her first vacation in years, she get's a call from a friend in her company who is confused about a weird disk that's come into his possession, and wants her to help him. Not willing to figure it out over the phone or on the computer, he tells her he needs to see her in person and he's flying to her home in L.A. He never arrives...The cast is great, with Sandra Bullock pulling out all the stops in her fight for what is right. There are no sex scenes, no violence or over-indulgent special effects, just content. Every movie lover should own a copy of this film as an example of how to make a film without over indulgence and heavy reliance on effect.. This is a film that can be viewed several times, with each time revealing a little more detail. There is less obvious comedy and glamour in this role, but Sandra Bullock is excellent and intense, as the woman fighting for her life, and ends on a happy note caring for her Mother, and with a new status, working from a new home. There were a lot of conspiracies in this movie, in my opinion its a film that makes you really think how controlled your life is by the internet. Very compelling story.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a software beta test consultant. She's a homebody with few friends outside of cyberspace. She collects computer viruses for her friend Dale Hessman. She visits her mom (Diane Baker) in an old age home but she doesn't remember her. Dale sends her a program that seems to access unauthorized sites and then he's killed. She goes on vacation and meets Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam) who turns out to be a cold-hearted killer looking for the program. She barely escapes the attempt on her life and computers are going wrong giving her an alternate identity Ruth Marx. Her life is taken over by Devlin and she's pursued by the police. The only person she can turn to is Dr. Alan Champion (Dennis Miller) who actually knows her in real life.The question is why not just kill her. That seems to be the objective from before. Of course, he's trying to date her. If they want to know who she talked to, why not kidnap her? Torture is so much easier. Also why couldn't she make copies of the disk? Didn't she have access to the program in the hotel? There is a lot of stuff that is questionable even if the computer stuff is reasonable. The stuff surrounding the computer stuff makes little sense. Also the movie insists on killing people in the most complicated ways possible. And it seems like Bullock is always running in this movie.

Following her first big role in Demolition Man, and her big boost in Speed, the leading actress was getting bigger, so obviously the filmmakers wanted to cash in on her popularity at the time, so came this tekkie movie, from director Irwin Winkler (De-Lovely). Basically in Venice, California is computer expert and a systems and software analyst Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock), she works from home for Cathedral Software as a contract employee, and as she mostly communicates online and by telephone she has interpersonal relationships and hardly any with people, even her own mother (Diane Baker) who suffers Alzheimer's disease. A new security system called "Gatekeeper" is becoming universally used, it seems it will thrive for Cathedral in the computer software world as they created it, there also appears on a Cathedral game to be a virus, and a "π" (Pi) symbol appears on the systems occasionally, but Angela is ready for a vacation in Cozumel, Mexico. There she meets suave Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam), he is not all he seems though, as he pays a mugger to steal Angela's purse to take the disk out of it, following a romantic night together on a speedboat she finds his gun and realises he was going to kill her, she steals back the disk and escapes in a dinghy, but she collides with the rocks, destroying the disk and falling unconscious for three days. Angela wakes up and finds that all records of her identity have been deleted, someone checked her out of the hotel, her car is missing, her credit cards are invalid, her house is for sale, and her social security number is under the name "Ruth Marx", her name appears under a number of criminal offences. Another woman has taken her identity, the impostor offers to give her the life she had stolen back in exchange for the disk, which of course no longer exists, the only person she knows could help her get things back to normal, who recognises her facially, is her psychiatrist and former lover Alan Champion (Dennis Miller). With Angela's knowledge of computer systems she uses a password she found in Devlin's wallet and goes to Bethesda Naval Hospital to access confidential records, finding out a conspiracy and about cyberterrorists and hackers the "Praetorians", of course she is tracked along the way by Devlin, working as a contract killer for the cyberterrorists. There is a point where she is arrested due to the crimes listed on her changed records, but she manages to escape, but she is now accused of murder, so she has to rush to prove her innocence and release evidence of the corrupt security system incidents, it is at a computer convention that she accesses the systems once again, while Devlin and the impostor Ruth Marx (Wendy Gazelle) search for her. By the time they find Angela she has already sent all the evidence she gained to the FBI, and she is able to trick Devlin into erasing her false identity, chasing her he unintentionally shoots dead Ruth Marx, and she sprays a fire extinguisher causing him to fall from a catwalk to his death, the film ends with Angela reuniting with her mother and life going back to normal. Also starring Ken Howard as Michael Bergstrom, Ray McKinnon as Dale Hessman, Daniel Schorr as WNN Anchor, L. Scott Caldwell as Public Defender, Robert Gossett as Ben Phillips and Margo Winkler, Irvin's wife as Mrs. Raines. Bullock certainly proves a good choice being the originally lonely computer geek turned innocent fugitive breaking into a number of computers to sort herself out, and it is likely that this was made to coincide with the popularising of the internet, but Northum is rather wooden as the villain, the story is a little overcomplicated and confusing at times, and it could have been a little more pacey and have more frantic hide and seek style chases, but it is near watchable enough, an alright thriller. Okay!