"Skyggen" is a Danish film from 1998 that was renamed "Webmaster" for its 2000 distribution in the United States. It was dubbed into English, and fairly well I might add. But that's the last compliment the movie will get from me.

Predictably, the movie has nothing to do with the web or being a webmaster. No, it's just another one of those generic futuristic techno thrillers in which popular computer terms are bandied about for atmosphere but without understanding. The main character is a hacker who hacks into a crime lord's "domain," gets caught, and offered a job as the "webmaster" of the "domain." His job is to oversee the transactions occurring within the "domain" and to ensure that all the systems are up and running. Well, it sounds like a webmaster's job on the surface, but the reason I'm putting these terms in quotes is because the "domain" isn't, for example, a name like "rinkworks.com" or even just "a web site." No, the "domain" is an actual, physical building with all kinds of wires running through it. If you are logged into the system, that means you have inserted your ego disk CD into a drive and put these special goggles on that serve as your display. Commands are all voice controlled. Your "ego" is a futuristic version of MS Word's paper clip mascot dude. It's a guy that has been "trained" to do what it is told. This is convenient, because it eliminates the need for this "hacker" to know anything about "hacking." Instead, when he wants to break into, for example, a surveillance camera, he tells his ego assistant, "Find me the surveillance camera," and the little meditating ego dude pulls up view after view after view until it stumbles upon the surveillance camera view that was requested. (Later on, the main character tells another that he witnessed a murder through a surveillance camera. The claim is met with shocked disbelief. "No one's EVER hacked into a surveillance camera before!")

I'll cease putting quotes around "domain," because it's annoying. The "top level" of the domain, the webmaster tells us, is the "safest place in cyberworld," because hackers cannot get in and "upset the balance." Only a privileged few are allowed to connect to the top level, and only a few, for that matter, are allowed to connect with terabit connections, because it is a terabit connection that allows you so much freedom and power in cyberworld. All the other schmoes have to be content with the restricted access provided by megabit and gigabit connections.

The top level, it would appear, corresponds to the top level of the actual crime lord's building. But -- surprise! -- somebody breaks in! We know, because we see the webmaster's "ego" frolicking about in the top level, and then we see someone else in there! Apparently hackers of the future are smart enough to break into places but not smart enough to disable the 3D displays that betray their presence. I should also mention that the digitized views of cyberworld are insanely shoddy. The graphics are simplistic, and the view jumps around, as if display devices of the future have their horizontal hold perpetually misadjusted.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The webmaster, as I said, was frolicking about in the top level of the domain, interacting with the ego he programmed of the woman he has yet to admit he loves. The ego swears up a storm when speaking, then, still swearing, complains that she has to swear all the time. The webmaster informs her that it's a bug in her voice speech control synthesizer vocal speaker simulator modulator or some such and says that it will be fixed soon. As a software engineer, I personally consider myself extremely lucky that I have yet to encounter the dreaded Profanity Bug myself, but I suppose it's only a matter of time.

So, as I said, a hacker broke into the top level, and a murder was witnessed through one of those unhackable surveillance cameras. Later it is discovered that money is slowing flowing out of the crime boss' account and into somebody else's. Apparently, in the future, it takes a very long time to transfer money, and not even banks can stop it, because money flows out of the crime lord's bank account constantly, over a period of about 24 hours. I'm not sure how much was transferred during all that time, but it wasn't all of it.

So, understandably, the crime lord is very upset. So he instructs the webmaster to find the hacker that's doing it. Oh, but if only it were so simple. Actually, the crime lord roughs the webmaster up, threatens him, and forces him to find the hacker without the aid of his ego. Yes, this movie's vision of the future is an optimistic one. It's a time when everyone has an equal opportunity. No longer is the job of crime lord restricted only to those who aren't complete blithering idiots. You'd think, if you wanted your webmaster guy to find a hacker, you'd be nice to him and give him every resource he needs -- ESPECIALLY the all-important paper clip helper -- but no. Later on, it does turn out that the bank account the money is being transferred to is the webmaster's own, but even before the framing evidence turns up, the crime boss takes these inexplicable measures. Does this guy want the hacker found or not? It's rather like a basketball coach instructing his players to win the game while sitting still in the court.

As if that weren't all, the badguy gives the webmaster a fake mechanical heart scheduled to shut down after some number of hours. The heart is great. It's just this shiny metal thing with a thumb print sensor and a digital readout and these claw-like tubes that stick out around the edges like Capri-Sun straws: hollow, so blood can flow through them, and pointed on the end, so they can puncture skin easily. The mechanical heart, you see, is installed not by a meticulous surgical procedure. Oh no. It's installed by stabbing it into the chest of the recipient. Our webmaster hero cringes and convulses from the pain, then from the momentary loss of blood flow, but then the mechanical heart starts pumping, and we see the blood flowing through the tubes. Just like that. Stab a guy in the chest, bypass the heart.

It's worse. It's rigged with some sort of anti-hacking mystique so that even this intrepid hacker can't hack into the heart. It's also apparently rigged so that if he tries to pull it out, it, I don't know, kills him or something. The crime lord has his assistant use a remote control to set the timer on the heart; then the crime lord presses his thumb against the heart to start it. A thumb print is used to do almost everything with the heart. At various times, a thumb print pressed against the sensor will start the heart working, stop it working, start the timer counting down, stop the timer counting down, and release the heart from his body. Later in the movie, a copy of his thumb print is stolen and pressed against the sensor; the countdown momentarily stops, but then cuts off the blood flow on him, and our webmaster hero gets thrown into convulsions again. I don't know how it knew the difference between a copy of the badguy's thumb print and the real thing. But it's an unhackable device, so obviously it's smart enough to figure out somehow.

So the webmaster dude is supposed to find this hacker that broke into the top level, into the badguy's bank account, and appears to be killing off all those with terabit connections. But the webmaster lacks his paper clip, so he's pretty much powerless to find whoever it is, because hackers of the future are dumb. So he goes online to find what "traces" of his trained ego might still be residing in cyberworld and manages to find a dumbed-down version of his ego there. It's powerless, lacking access to secure areas and not knowledgeable about how to hack into them, so it's not much use. However, the crime lord was at least nice enough to provide an electronically-represented wiring diagram of the domain. The webmaster mutters something about how useless and innavigable such a complex wiring diagram is, then, as we see via the cheesy 3D animated display, quickly finds a security breach. There is an "unauthorized terabit connection," he sees, running from the top level to the basement. Gasp!

So the webmaster jaunts over to the building that is the badguy's domain. Now, I have no explanation for why this building operates the way it does. It's not just a big badguy's elaborate hideout. I'm not sure what the stated purpose of the building is. All I know is, the crime lord hangs out there somewhere toward the top, but, down below, apparently, it's this big sleazy night club or something. In the basement there is one constant dance party going on with all manner of scarily dressed denizens of the shadier side of humanity. In other rooms in the basement, some recreational torture frolicking takes place, which is sort of a euphemism for things not quite wholesome enough to mention. From the looks of things, every night a certain portion of a perpetual crowd raging outside is let in the gates by the guards. These people flock to the basement of the domain and party it up. Why sleazy night club type stuff is being sponsored down there, I have no idea. Later, upstairs, the crime lord has a conversation in which reference is made to the basement. The crime lord expresses surprise that his girlfriend was seen down there because "nobody," meaning no person with even the smallest inkling of decency, is EVER seen down there.

The mind boggles at how such a situation ever came about, but no matter. The webmaster dude roots around in the basement and discovers, right there, in plain view, running along the ceiling, the secret unauthorized terabit connection!

Now, apparently clipping the wire is out of the question, because nobody ever thinks of it. The webmaster continues his detective work and discovers the crime lord's girlfriend was the one who hacked into the top level. But the movie continues to shroud the identity of the person doing all the hacking and killing in secrecy. No, the movie isn't being sneaky and leading us on into thinking the culprit is someone it isn't. This movie isn't clever enough for that.

I'll go light on the details about how the plot unfolds, because it's not really that interesting. The webmaster and his partner and a couple of losers spend a lot of time evading guards in the sleazy basement, milling about with the crime lord's girlfriend, and stumbling through "cyberworld." One particularly puzzling scene involves the crime lord's girlfriend seducing the webmaster right in the same room the crime lord is sleeping. We cut to a cyberworld view, and it turns out, the crime lord can see them in his sleep. Huh? How? Why? Assorted mean people with inexplicable vendettas drift in and out of view -- one bad dude has something against the webmaster's partner that I never quite figured out. The ending is predictably uninspired.

In spite of how easy it is to make fun of this inexplicable movie, it's not at all interesting to watch. What there is to laugh at, besides the computer stupidities, is mostly only laughable after the fact. The movie is so humorless, heavy-handed, and often gruesome that it's not at all conducive to enjoyment in the moment.

Rating: 2 turkeys.