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.

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.

This movie is actually pretty watchable if you are a bit technical and don't mind viewing a film to laugh at its inherent badness. The script repeatedly uses networking lingo out of context and demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of networking principles. My favorite scene is when they're searching logs for traces of a computer break-in and the hero exclaims when no traces are found "There's not even a cookie?!?". I expect even a non-tech should be able to find a couple of laughs about the overwhelming lack of technical advisement. Some understanding of distributed attacks and viruses might have helped, but I guess the idea of two hackers trying to out type each other works better for Hollywood. The cinematography is low-average for a made for TV. I liked Judge Reinhold's acting, and Kris Kristofferson, Bakula I found to be often flat or alternately overacted. Conclusion: Don't rent it unless you're into bad movies, worth catching on Cable on a slow day.

I rented this because of Tom Clancy's name alone. What a mistake. All adaptations of his excellent books (with the possible except of "Red October") have ruined plots, hopeless scripts and near-intolerable acting from otherwise fine performers. This, sadly, was no different. Nothing in the look and feel of the movie even suggests Hollywood involvement -- it looks, and indeed IS, so badly done it seems to be a television series pilot (complete with "cut to commercial fade-outs") that did not make it. The video release is an attempt to regain some lost revenue. Movie plots still don't handle technology, and especially the Internet, realistically unless the story is full-bore sci-fi. Don't waste your time or money on this.

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.