Director Irwin Winkler's attempt to pull off a Hitchcockian thriller doesn't quite come off, but Sandra Bullock remains as charming as ever. Through Bullock's job as an isolated software tester, the script uses the trappings of the Internet to enmesh her in the typically Hitchcockian plot of the falsely accused hero, or in this case, heroine, after hackers have erased her identity. The audience knows that she's really in trouble when her only ally happens to be the pathologically cool Dennis Miller. The contrivances of the plot are very familiar at this point, and the unoriginal script rings no new changes on the well-known themes. Yet if Winkler lacks the master's deft touch, the film does churn along, and Bullock's warmth and naturalness make her sympathetic as the beauty in distress. Jeremy Northam is effective as the suave villain, as is Diane Baker in the role of Bullock's Alzheimers-afflicted mother. Perhaps not until The Matrix (1999) would the Internet be given its cinematic due.