User Reviews

I have an unfortunate habit of wanting to see any movie starring actors that I particularly like. This has resulted in me seeing numerous movies that are just pure wastes of time, despite the presence of highly skilled actors (or at least ONE highly skilled actor). Often the only way to see these movies is to find them on eBay and purchase them. They usually wind up at Half-Price Books after I'm finished.

I should have known when I looked it up on IMDb, and found that a 20-year-old movie had received less than 5 ratings votes, and one viewer comment was entitled "Worst movie ever made?" Bruce Payne was my reason for watching this. He's not an A-list actor (which is why I have to resort to eBay), but is quite talented and versatile as a character actor when given something to work with.

Bruce is Lawrence MacNiece, a computer security specialist. His system, C.H.A.P.S. (I forget what it stands for), is "unhackable." Yah, right, that's just challenging some hacker to try.

Leon is a young man who was framed for his father's murder, but escapes from a detention center (very low-security, looked more like a school than a prison) in order to prove his innocence. Instead, he goes to a video arcade.

There he meets up with Fast Eddie (Edith) and one of her friends (Big Baldie). Big Baldie promptly has his throat slashed by a couple of thugs looking for Eddie (we don't know why). Eddie and Leon run off together.

Leon blames MacNiece for his father's death. Again, we don't know why.

Eddie and Leon team up with Freak, a pre-pubescent computer hacker who looks oddly like Fred Savage (The Princess Bride; The Wonder Years). They (Leon and Freak) blackmail their way into a job testing the integrity of MacNiece's security system.

Eddie poses as a free-lance writer who wants to interview MacNiece. He takes her to dinner (where she spends as much time talking about herself as interviewing him) and gives her a crash course in chopstick-wielding, screams at someone in Japanese for no apparent reason, then drives her home to her rinky-dink flat in his Ferrari.

Couple days later, she has dinner with him at his place, where he -- voluntarily and of his own volition -- signs her into his security system (entering his password and code key right in front of her) in order to play a GAME! Meanwhile, Freak and Leon, unable to actually hack the security system, hack MacNiece's home terminal while he and Eddie are online and install a program that will load whenever the silly game is played and divert money from his company accounts into an LTD they've set up (Lawrence M, Ltd.).

MacNiece can tell he's being hacked, and isn't worried about it (you apparently have to be able to beat the game before you can do any damage; what he doesn't realize is that Fast Eddie and Freak are video game nerds) -- he's actually hoping they'll "escape" before the program traces them. His logic: if they're traced and caught, people will find out his system is hackable. Wha-huh?????? Turns out, MacNiece has figured out what Eddie is up to, including who she's working with, and confronts her with it after dinner. Then, again for no apparent reason, he has sex with her. He looks bored the entire time (all of about three seconds that the sex scene lasts) and is barely moving. She, on the other hand, is screaming and writhing like a porn queen -- except they did something weird to her voice, so she sounds more like the Golgothan sh!t demon from DOGMA.

The ending was more bizarre than the rest of the movie combined. And we still have no idea why Leon thinks MacNiece is responsible for his father's death. Leon is still on the lam. Eddie apparently still has people after her. Freak was kicked out of his parents' house in the middle of the movie and has been staying with Eddie and Leon, but they don't seem to be going back to collect him when they drive off into the sunset (in a stolen car). Oh, and Eddie was hedging her bets all over the place with MacNiece, because for awhile, it looks like she's running off with him with the $10 million diverted to Lawrence M, Ltd.

All I can say is, at least Bruce LOOKS good, which is more than I can say for a few other Bruce movies I've seen. This was a year after ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS and before his pudgy phase (RAVAGER, FACE THE EVIL), and he's starting to mature nicely into the chiseled features he now sports.

No real spoilers, but I like to watch my back.

I remember being made to watch this in IT at secondary school. I couldn't remember much about it, but I do recall someone getting their throat cut, a crap sex scene, it being about hackers, and the title being something like Smart Money (which it is, funnily enough...). Not a lot to go on admittedly, but I now at least know for certain. It wasn't very good as I recall.

Looks like Bernard Rose (Candyman) liked Alexandra Pigg. He used her in a few films. Perhaps he was a fan of Brookside?

Despite having seen him in many productions, I'd never realised Bruce Payne was actually British. I should have noticed, since he's always playing villains in B-Movies like Passenger 57, Highlander: Endgame, and Warlock III.

Seeing this was a BBC film makes me wonder exactly who decides what our licence fee gets spent on...