Critical Movie Review Template

In a critical movie review, you systematically evaluate a film’s effectiveness including what it does well
and what it does poorly. It can be used to discuss a science and technology documentary film. You must
review the film carefully and may need to look up terms or concepts you are unfamiliar with or research
related reading prior to writing your review.

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Name: Ralph Theodore Alvarez
Title of Film: The Net (2003)
Genre: Documentary, Thriller, Crime and Indie Film

The film was shown this weekend (30 April) in Paris in the presence of its director, Lutz Dammbeck, who
stayed to take questions from the audience afterward.

The film's premise is frightening enough -- the internet was originally developed through a sort of unholy
alliance between (i) scientists bent on "remodeling" post-WWII man in order to avoid a repeat of war by
isolating (through various mind-control experiments) and then removing the genesis of authoritarian
personalities, (ii) the American intelligence community bent on winning the Cold War, and (iii)
(somewhat improbable) a group of "hippie" non-conformists and artists who shared the vision of the
aforementioned scientists. Dammbeck develops the premise by a series of interviews with various
members of each group whom he considers as having been the "architects" of the internet.

Against this alliance stands Dammbeck's unpalatable anti-hero, the Unabomber (whom Dammbeck
certainly does not admire, yet has some sympathy with -- Dammbeck reminds us that Kaczynski was one
of the students who actually underwent the mind-control experiments in question, which may have
triggered the unhinging of his mind).

The problem with the film is that in each of the interviews, after having drawn out his subject into
explaining his role in the development of the internet, Dammbeck then asks the interviewee whether such
development was not subject to legitimate criticism and then provides as an example...the criticisms made
by Kaczynski in his Unabomber manifesto! Of course, this simply triggers an emotional response from
each of the interviewees that Kaczynski was either a madman, a dangerous criminal or both, so that the
question of whether there is not some truth to the argument that such development was dangerous is never
answered. Dammbeck never first alludes in his interviews to other critics of technological positivism who
did not feel it necessary to make their criticisms by means of letter bombs.

This "technique" reaches its paroxysm when Dammbeck interviews one of the Unabomber's victims, who
lost an eye and a hand to one of the letter bombs, and asks him whether he does not feel that Kaczynski
had some worthwhile criticisms to make. Needless to say, the interviewee responds with an entirely
understandable emotional response which the audience is somehow supposed to feel constitutes a refusal
to consider the merits of the question.

Dammbeck might have been better off asking his of his interviewees a series of less "loaded" questions
first before springing on them "So, do you think that this fellow who killed three people and wounded a
dozen others (including in one case the actual interviewee!) had something worthwhile to say?" It is too
bad that this technique takes the edge off what is a very troubling theory developed in the film. Still, it is a
film worth seeing, particularly as it becomes clear by the end of the film that Dammbeck has in fact been
keeping up a running correspondence with Kaczynski and has a good idea of what makes him tick.
Remember critical analysis should be fun! This is your chance to say what you think about a piece, but
you must back up your opinions with supporting arguments and specific details from the text.