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.
