BEFORE: We hit the chowderfest today (and I hit it hard - requiring a 3-hour nap afterwards) and then relaxed at Andy's place. I would have offered for Andy to join me watching this film, but he knows so much about computers that I feared for him it would either play as a comedy, or a film full of mistakes.
Linking from "Cop Out", Bruce Willis was in "Bandits" with Billy Bob Thornton, who was in "Pushing Tin" with Angelina Jolie. Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that I chose this film tonight to give a birthday SHOUT-out to Ms. Jolie (last seen in "Changeling"), born June 4, 1975.
THE PLOT: A young boy is arrested by the US Secret Service for writing a computer virus and is banned from using a computer until his 18th birthday. Years later, he and his new-found friends discover a plot to unleash a dangerous computer virus.
AFTER: OK, I'm no computer expert, but I do remember the burgeoning internet culture of 1995, and even I can tell this film is full of mistakes.
NITPICK POINT: Computer geeks are solitary by nature (or at least they were in the early days of the internet) so the chances of two or more hackers with solid skills and reputations getting together in the real world, especially all at the same high school, is close to nil. Hackers are also a distinct social group, separate from club kids. I doubt there's much overlap between those two groups. Hackers simply didn't all congregate in a big clubhouse with giant-wall virtual reality games, where they all rollerbladed around. Ridiculous.
NITPICK POINT #2: A hacker taps into a TV network's mainframe, and the only evil thing he wants to do is to make that station play old episodes of "The Outer Limits"? Which are on 3/4 inch tapes that are selected by robotic arms? I don't think that's how TV stations function... Wouldn't it be easier to just watch the old episodes of that show on DVD, or download them from somewhere? (I know, YouTube didn't exist yet...)
NITPICK POINT #3: For experienced hackers, you'd think they'd type a whole lot faster than the "hunt and peck" method, right?
NITPICK POINT #4: Of course, all you need to takedown a corporation's evil plot is to steal a few memos from a company trash bin (don't they all shred their documents?) and make a few phony flower deliveries? Nope, not buying it.
Essentially this film is like what you'd get if "Wargames" and "Tron" had a baby, and that baby was born brain-dead.
Also starring Jonny Lee Miller, Jesse Bradford (last seen in "Flags of Our Fathers"), Matthew Lillard, Fisher Stevens, Lorraine Bracco (last seen in "Switch"), with cameos from Marc Anthony, Penn Gillette, Felicity Huffman, and Dave Stewart (from the Eurhythmics)
RATING: 3 out of 10 dial-up modems
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