TOM CLANCY'S NETFORCE

TOM CLANCY'S NETFORCE (vt. NETFORCE). Robert Lieberman, dir. Tom Clancy, co-exec. prod., source book [?]. Lionel Chetwynd, teleplay. Scott Bakula, star. Brian Dennehy, Judge Reinhold, Joanna Going, Kris Kristofferson, Xander Berkley, featured players. An "ABC Premiere Event." Made for TV movie, Feb. 1999.

A Tom Clancy technothriller (or technofetishist exercise) that might be subtitled, "Watch It, Frat Boy; Nerd Power May Soon Possess Your Mother." Culminating in May of 2005, a Bill-Gates character (Reinhold) conspires to take over the Internet. Important for bringing to TV during a "sweeps" period some relevant SF motifs. See for images of surveillance, a VR chat room, and Kris Kristofferson as a construct on a laptop. Note quotations from Reinhold: "He who controls all information controls the world" and, "We're moving toward a future defined only by technology and market forces. A new world order. Based on electrons and information." Under Fiction, cf. and contrast W. Gibson's Neuromancer for huge corporations, the 'Net, and constructs, and F. Pohl's Gateway series for constructs. For surveillance, cf. and contrast under Drama the contemporaneous ENEMY OF THE STATE, where surveillance is much more negative than in NETFORCE. The Microsoft analog in the film, Janus Corp. Technology (spelled with and without a space), has a name that may represent much of the message of the film on the promise and threat of technology: Janus is a two-faced god, and god of beginnings and endings. Reviewed (very negatively) by Frederick C. Szebin, Cinefantastique 31.5 (June 1999): 59.