- 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
- In Washington DC, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Michael Bergstrom (Ken Howard) commits suicide after being informed that he has tested positive for HIV.
Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a computer systems analyst in living in Venice, Los Angeles, California who telecommutes to her employment at Cathedral Software based in San Francisco. Her interpersonal relationships are almost completely online and on the phone, with the exception of forgettable interactions with her neighbors and visits to her 60-year-old mother (Diane Baker), who is institutionalized with an early onset type of Alzheimer's disease and often forgets who Angela is. Angela's co-worker Dale (Ray McKinnon) sends her a 3.5 inch floppy disk with a backdoor labeled 'Pi' that permits access to a commonly used computer security system called "Gatekeeper" sold by Gregg Microsystems, a software company led by CEO Jeff Gregg. Dale and Angela agree to meet, but later that night the navigation system in Dale's private aircraft malfunctions and it crashes into a tower, killing him.
Angela travels to Cozumel, Mexico for a week-long on vacation, where she meets Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam), a charming English-accent businessman who charms his way into her life. After seducing Angela, Devlin pays a local mugger to steal her purse as they walk along the beach during an after-dinner stroll. He chases the mugger into the foliage, catches the mugger, and roots through the purse to find the disk before shooting the mugger dead. Devlin takes Angela out on his speedboat to kill her as well after sleeping with her again, but she finds his gun and confronts him. While fleeing with the disk and Devlin's wallet, Angela's dinghy collides with rocks, destroying the disk and hospitalizing her. She is unconscious for three days.
When Angela wakes up, she finds that all records of her life have been deleted: She was checked out of her hotel room in Cozumel, her car is no longer at the LAX airport parking lot, and all of her credit cards are invalid. When she arrives home by taxi, Angela discovers that her house is now empty and listed for sale. Moreover, because none of the neighbors remember her, they cannot confirm her identity. Things turn from bad to worse when after contacting the police, Angela's Social Security number is now assigned to a "Ruth Marx," for whom Devlin has entered an arrest record by hacking the police computer system. Angela is forced to flee for her life. Once on the streets, she steals a cell phone from the real estate agent in her former house and calls her own desk at Cathedral Software, an impostor (Wendy Gazelle) answers and offers Bennett her old life back in exchange for the disk.
Angela 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, Angela logs into the Bethesda Naval Hospital's computers and learns that Under Secretary of Defense Bergstrom, who had opposed Gatekeeper's use by the federal government, was misdiagnosed. Fellow hacker "Cyberbob" connects 'Pi' with the "Praetorians," a notorious group of cyber-terrorists linked to recent computer failures around the country. Angela and Cyberbob plan to meet, but the unseen Praetorians intercept their online chat and relay it to Devlin who is now relentlessly pursuing her. Angela manages to escape from Devlin... who is now revealed to be a contract killer for the cyber-terrorists, but the Praetorians kill Champion by tampering with pharmacy and hospital computer records for his medication.
Angela is forced to steal a car to flee from Los Angeles, but she is chased and arrested by the California Highway Patrol. While in jail waiting trial for a series of false criminal charges, a man identifying himself as Ben Phillips (Robert Gossette), Champion's FBI friend bails her from jail. While driving, Angela realizes that "Ben" is an impostor after he makes a slip to her about the Praetorians, and escapes again, killing the impostor with his own gun.
Now wanted for murder and thought to be Ruth Marx, Angela hitchhikes to Cathedral's office in San Francisco where, she triggers a fire alarm to evacuate the building and now using her impostor's computer, she connects the cyber-terrorists to Gregg Microsystems and uncovers their scheme: once the Praetorians sabotage an organization's computer system, Gregg sells Gatekeeper to it and gains unlimited access through the backdoor. Angela downloads another 3.5 inch disk and escapes just as the impostor realizes her presence.
Angela escapes from the building and makes her way to the Moscone Center with Devlin and the Bennett impostor in pursuit. After finding a desktop site to log on, she emails evidence of the backdoor and Gregg's involvement with the Praetorians to the FBI just before Devlin and the Bennett impostor catch up with her. Angela then tricks Devlin into releasing a virus into Gregg's mainframe, destroying Gatekeeper and undoing the erasing of her identity.
During a battle on the catwalks of the convention center, in which Devlin accidentally kills the Bennett impostor from Cathedral Software (revealed to be the real Ruth Marx), Angela ambushes Devlin with a fire extinguisher, causing him to fall to his death.
At the end, Angela Bennett regains her identity, home, and life. She then reunites with her mother (who still does not remember her) and goes back to her old solitary life. In a series of news reports, the conspiracy is exposed, with Jeff Gregg being arrested by the FBI.
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