Tom Clancys Netforce

Oh boy,this was pretty dire.I like Tom Clancy the author very much.His books are cleverly and brilliantly constructed political/modern thrillers,with expert dialouge and good,detailed charecter and story development.More's the reason I feel pretty stupid renting this cheap,low grade nonsense when I could have ordered the book out my library and tested my brain and my limits much further.I had to sit still in my bedroom for 154 flat out minutes watching this endless and poorly,pacelessly constructed tirefest.Thank goodness for competent actors eh?Not so much thanks owed to poorer ones.Judge Reinhold was ace as a snidy,confident baddie.He deserved much better material than this.It was nice to see Kris Kristofferson in one of his better,more accomplished roles of late,although he only occupies a rough cut 25 minutes of screentime.And he kept appearing in daft hallucinations of himself in wanternly unnesarsary VR moments.On the flip side,oh my,Miss.Joanna'ooh,look what an accomplished young madam I am'Going,sharing screen chemistry with the equally vacuous Scot 'Hav'nt I moved on since Quantum Leap'Bakula,having a briefly explored on screen romance with a girl who must be at least 20 years younger than he is.And Brian Dehnehy is hopelessly flat and ineffective as Bakula's superior.Basically,I'd admire this one's cover,but please,don't bother with the movie,go read the book instead.

At least the first 30 minutes, which is all I managed before I had to race up to the video rental and get another movie. As Robert Cooper commented: It's not often that I watch a movie, and feel it necessary to jump straight onto IMDb and write about it, but for an entirely different reason. The first half hour of this movie is so full of clichés, bad acting and cheap effects, I couldn't watch another minute.

Having enjoyed several good movies based on Clancy's novels (Patriot Games, Red October...) I was genuinely disappointed by this botch. I actually get the feeling that these people are acting (not the actors, the characters!).

It's difficult to say anything about the storyline, having seen but a small part of the movie, but I did get the impression I usually get when watching movies about hacking, Internet etc, that these people don't know much about what the Internet is, and how it works. Of course, that MAY have changed later in the movie...

If you're gonna watch this movie, keep your expectations low. My advice: pick another!

Made for tv movies can never escape the feeling they we're made for television. The taste, the sight and the scent. It's always there. Tom Clancy's Netforce itself was originally a two part television movie (how little did I know). In fact, it's all still somewhat a wash. Let me break it down for you.

Flash forward to 2005. The internet has become so powerful and potentially dangerous that the US government sets up a division within the FBI entitled "Netforce" to preside over it from the evil people of the world who look to exploit it for their corrupt plans. Personally I seriously disbelieve the internet holds the future of the world in it's grasp, but that doesn't matter because the people at Netforce couldn't protect it if they had to anyway.

Upon meeting the major characters we realize they're roles we've all seen before. Like the male main character who's strong and dresses well. The rest of the cast fit typical molds. I especially liked how a certain character's ex-wife is a news reporter who at one point becomes a key piece in the story. Everyone is so linked together. Realistic? No. Then again none of the characters have any real depth. They're just names and faces. There's also too many needless minor characters who provide nothing but padding and viewer confusion. It gets hard remembering twenty characters throughout a two plus hour movie. I want to give credit for trying to develop them, but it fails because we know they're insignificant.

Frankly I expected more from such an ensemble cast too. Scott Bakula gets to look smart in suit, but this could have benefited from someone with more clout than Bakula. He's sufficient, but that's about it. Meanwhile Kris Kristofferson gets the cliché elder role and good 'ol Brian Dennehy has been given the plum task of the President's Chief Of Staff. That means him popping up spewing 'How his ass is on the line' or 'the President's p***ed at him'. Yes good actors can't save bad scripts. That's a fact. Which bothers me even further because this product has Tom Clancy's name written all over it. Yet it isn't anywhere near the quality of his past outings. It's a real disservice. Some of the blame has to fall straight into the writer's lap too. I say this because I find it hard to see this as an adaptation project that started well. It was bad from the get-go. The story stinks. It's amateur hour.

Especially considering how much they squeeze into their time frame. Would more have helped? I'm hesitant to say. Even with over two hours they still came back with this slop. Frankly 160 minutes is a long time and there isn't enough depth to sustain a person's interest or the holding of disbelief for such a period.

It can't even be taken seriously. Like Judge Reinhold playing the 'evil multi-billion dollar software tycoon' looking to control the world or how corny it is to have FBI agents point loaded weapons in the faces of innocent cabdrivers. It's things like these that help make Netforce such a bore and honestly for a film dealing so heavily with computers and the internet, they sure went skimpy on the technical aspects too. I guess they didn't want to lose their biggest viewing demographic ... computer inept coach potatoes and patriotic Tom Clancy fans.

For what it's trying to be, NetForce offers very little (if any) paranoia, suspense or "edge of your seat excitement" as so called critics would say. Netforce draws nothing but boredom and that's not exactly new territory. Last thing too. A golden rule of movies. If they don't find a body 95% of the time that's a clear signal the person ain't dead. That's the facts.

Netforce attempts to be a very serious technothriller in the year 2005, but fails miserably. Except for the fact that the plot is very tacky and not very well done, it's also spanned out over way to much time, the movie totals 2h40min. But this isn't really Netforce biggest problem. Being a bit of a geek myself this movie turned out to be much more of a comedy than a thriller. The technology and the events concerning it are so totally absurd that's unbelievable. Both me and my friends were virtually crying due to the sick things the director and/or Tom Clancy had in store. Some comments that sums it all up is "Phew, the Internet is intact!" and "Woah, another netcrash!". Deep, deep sigh. Not to mention the fact that the bad guys encryptions is broken in 3 seconds. Someone should tell them about, say RSA or DSS/DH algorithms. So, whatever you do, DON'T watch this movie unless a) You're totally nontechnical and can look aside all the gross mistakes or b) you're a hacker and wants a good laugh.

For a film based upon such a refined subject as computers and the intricacies of the internet, I felt sure that there'd have to be some sort of off-the-cuff humour injected somewhere during proceedings to offset the technical detail. Surely they couldn't expect everybody to get excited about firewalls, web browsers and computer crime without something else to keep it company. Well, as it turns out, that's exactly what they expected and the film turns out to be drier than dust.

Some of the technical detail was stretched to the very limit of credibility - it seems they severely overshot what the internet would be like in 2005 - yet they still imagined we'd be using floppy disks? More research, and effort, was called for in places that's for sure.

Plus, it was an hour too long. Nearly 160 minutes is far too excessive for a film of its kind and an hour could easily have been taken off without too many problems. The acting was hokey - but not as bad as some TV movies - the technology very dodgy in parts and the romance subplot extremely wobbly, but anybody with even half an interest in computers and the internet may as well give it a go.