When Angela Bennett, a computer programmer, stumbles upon government secrets, she finds herself on the run from an unknown enemy hell-bent on destroying her completely.
In Washington D.C., the Secretary Michael Bergstrom talks to his wife and son by cellphone in a park and then commits suicide. In Venice, California, the reclusive hacker Angela Bennett works in home office for the Cathedral Software in San Francisco, and her point of contact is her co-worker Dale. Angela has no relationship with her neighbors and her mother Mrs. Bennett has Alzheimer's disease that she visits in an institution. When Angela is planning to travel on vacation to Cozumel after six years without vacation, she receives from Dale a disk of the Game "Mozart's Ghost" with a "pi" that gives access to the Gatekeeper security system sold by Gregg Microsystems and used by several companies and government. She returns the FedEx with a powerful virus that she has isolated. Dale schedules a meeting with Angela before she travels to Mexico to discuss his findings, but his Cessna crashes on a tower and he dies. Angela travels to Cozumel, where a man named Jack Devlin hits on her and seduces her. He takes Angela to a restaurant and while walking on the beach, a thief robs her purse and Devlin runs after him. The thief was hired by Devlin, and he kills him and takes the disk from her purse. He returns and takes Angela out in his speedboat to kill her, but they have one nightstand. While dressing, Angela finds Devlin's pistol with silencer and fights him. He passes out and she escapes with the disk in a motorized small inflatable boat, but she crashes a rock, and fishermen find and take her to a hospital. Three days later she wakes up and learns that the disk is ruined. Further, all her life has been deleted from the computer system and she has become Ruth Marx. She travels back home with a temporary passport in the name of Ruth Marx and finds that her house is empty and is for sale. She contacts her psychoanalyst Dr. Alan Champion, who has a crush on her and does not believe but helps her. Now Angela Bennet needs to recover her identity and discovers a huge conspiracy using the Gatekeeper to manipulate data of their users. Further, Jack Deviln is hunting her and her few friends down since she saw the backdoor of the Gatekeeper.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Angela Bennett is a computer expert. This young and beautiful analyst is never far from a computer and modem. The only activity she has outside of computers is visiting her mother. A friend, whom she's only spoken to over the net and phone, Dale Hessman, sent her a program with a weird glitch for her to de-bug. That night, he left to meet her and was killed in a plane crash. Angela discovers secret information on the disk she has received only hours before she leaves for vacation. Her life then turns into a nightmare, her records are erased from existence and she is given a new identity, one with a police record. She struggles to find out why this has happened and who has it in for her.—Official DVD cover
United States Undersecretary of Defense Michael Bergstrom (Ken Howard) commits suicide after discovering that he has tested positive for HIV.
Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a freelance systems analyst who lives in Venice, California. She Telecommutes to Cathedral Software in San Francisco. Her interpersonal relationships are completely online and, on the phone, limiting interactions with neighbors, and her mother (Diane Baker) who is institutionalized with Alzheimer's disease.Bennett is a nerd in all sense of the word and uses the internet to order Pizza, which was a novelty in 1995. Bennett also regularly attends cyber security topic related chat rooms, where one of the users is CyberBob.
Bennett's coworker Dale (Ray McKinnon) sends her a floppy disk of the game "Mozart's Ghost" with a backdoor into computer systems of major government departments and corporations in the US, labeled with symbol of Pi. Pi permits access of any web-based interface or database, to a commonly used computer security system called "Gatekeeper" sold by Gregg Microsystems, a software company led by CEO Jeff Gregg (Gerald Berns).Dale and Bennett agree to meet, but his private plane's navigation system malfunctions and it crashes.
Before leaving for her 2-week vacation, Benett learns that Dale died in a plane crash.Bennett travels to Cozumel, Mexico on vacation (with her tickets and hotel reservation booked online), where she meets Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam). Devlin is charming, handsome, sensitive and shares the same interests as Bennett. Devlin charms Bennett by taking her out on his boat and then to a fancy, romantic dinner.After seducing Bennett, Devlin pays a mugger to steal Bennett's purse with the disk as they walk along the beach.
He chases the mugger into the bushes, catches the mugger, and roots through the purse to find the disk before shooting the mugger dead. He seduces Bennett on his speedboat, but she finds his gun and confronts him. Devlin reveals through his retort that he has been monitoring Bennett's online chats. When Devlin attacks her, she hits him with a beer bottle and knocks him unconscious.While fleeing with the disk and Devlin's wallet (which she finds in the inside compartment of the boat), Bennett's dinghy (which was being towed by the boat and Bennett escapes in that as she could not get the boat engine to start) collides with rocks, destroying the disk and hospitalizing her, unconscious, for three days.
When Bennett wakes up, she finds that the disk was ruined by the sun and all records of her life have been deleted. As she travels back to the hotel she hears news about a computer glitch in the New York Stock Exchange, which was protected by the Gatekeeper security system. While coming into Mexico, she saw a similar glitch at the airport display screens, also protected by the same Gatekeeper system.
She was checked out of her hotel room, her car is no longer at the LAX parking lot, and her credit cards are invalid. Bennett's home is empty and listed for sale and, because none of the neighbors ever saw her, they cannot confirm her identity. Bennett's Social Security number is now assigned to a "Ruth Marx" (Wendy Gazelle), who has an arrest record. Devlin has entered an arrest record by using the Gatekeeper backdoor to hack the police computer system.
When Bennett calls her own desk at Cathedral Software, an impostor answers and offers Bennett her old life back in exchange for the disk.She contacts the only other person who knows her by sight, psychiatrist and former lover Alan Champion (Dennis Miller). He checks her into a hotel, offers to contact a friend at the FBI, and arranges to have her mother moved for her safety.
Using her knowledge of the backdoor and a password found in Devlin's wallet, Bennett logs into the Bethesda Naval Hospital's computers and learns that Bergstrom, who had opposed Gatekeeper's use by the federal government, was murdered by altering the results of his HIV test leading to a misdiagnosis.
Fellow hacker "Cyberbob" identifies Pi with the "Praetorians", a notorious group of Cyberterrorists linked to recent computer failures around the country. They plan to meet at Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier, but the Praetorians intercept their online chat.
Bennett escapes from Devlin-a contract killer for the Cyberterrorists-at the park, but the Praetorians kill Champion by tampering with pharmacy and hospital computer records. After Bennett is arrested by the California Highway Patrol a man identifying himself as Champion's FBI friend frees her from jail, but she discovers he is an impostor and escapes again.
Now wanted for murder, Bennett travels to Cathedral's office where, using her impostor's computer, she connects the terrorists to Gregg Microsystems and uncovers their scheme; once the Praetorians sabotage an organization's computer system, Gregg sells his Gatekeeper product to them and gains unlimited access through the backdoor.
Bennett emails evidence of the backdoor to the FBI from the Moscone Center and tricks Devlin into crashing Gregg's mainframe, undoing the erasing of her identity. They battle on the convention center's catwalks, where Devlin accidentally shoots and kills Marx. Bennett then ambushes Devlin with a fire extinguisher, causing him to fall to his death. Bennett reunites with her mother and the conspiracy exposed with Jeff Gregg being arrested by the FBI, live on television.
