Dec
15
“Virtuosity” Review
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I was at the video store last Friday, and the clerks were watching the 1995 techno-thriller, “Virtuosity.” The film stars Denzel Washington and then-unknown Aussie actor Russell Crowe. It’s about an ex-cop (Washington) who tracks a virtual reality serial killer (Crowe) that’s found his way into the real world. Having not seen the movie in fifteen years and now desperately wanting to revisit it, I bounced over to the video store again Saturday afternoon to rent it.
So, how does it hold up?
“Virtuosity” wasn’t a particularly successful film during its original release. It opened in August, the dumping ground of summer movie also-rans. The movie wasn’t a game-changer by any means. It just sort of came and went, not unlike the Daniel Stern comedy, “Bushwacked,” which was released the same day. I’m probably the only human who remembers that movie. Why? Well, believe it or not, “Virtuosity” and “Bushwacked” both parody the opening scene of “Saturday Night Fever,” where John Travolta struts down the sidewalk to the Bee Gees. It’s by some bizarre cosmic irony that the two films were released on the same day. And that particular bit of trivia seems too good to ignore.
At any rate, watching “Virtuosity” in 2010 was a delight. I’m always a fan of anachronistic futurisim. If I remember the trailers correctly, “Virtuosity” is set in the far-flung future of 1999, an age when humans are able to plug into a VR program that almost perfectly simulates the real world. It’s in this program that Washington’s character, Parker Barnes, tries to apprehend the SID 6.7, played with googly-eyed gusto by Crowe. The game doesn’t have all its bugs ironed out, and Barnes’ partner is killed during the simulation. But, the Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Centre (LETAC) is using convicts to test it out, so there’s no real harm done. Movies set in the future always treat prisoners like so much disposable garbage.
Wait, what’s Barnes doing in prison? As it turns out, he’s serving time for killing the notorious political assassin, Matthew Grimes, after the terrorist blew up Barnes’ family. A couple journalists were caught in the crossfire of Barnes’ retribution, so now he’s behind bars. Barnes himself was gravely injured in the explosion and how has a prosthetic left arm that rivals Lee Majors’.
At any rate, SID 6.7 appeals to his weasely programmer to be let out of his computer-generated confines, and through a quirk of pseudo-science, he soon finds himself inhabiting a nano-tech android body that can regenerate by coming into contact with glass. No, it doesn’t make much sense in the context of the movie, either.
Because this is a Denzel Washington movie, Denzel Washington is set free from prison to hunt down and destroy SID 6.7. Doing so will earn him a full pardon. If he fails, it’s back to the hoosegow. And so, Parker Barnes purses SID 6.7 from one setpiece to the next, as the futuristic Los Angeles acts as a high-tech playground for the serial killer. Did I mention that part of SID 6.7’s program includes Matthew Grimes’ twisted psyche? It also includes Hitler for some reason. SID 6.7 mostly behaves like every scenery-chewing nutjob in ’90s action-thrillers.
“Virtuosity” is a movie that I find incredibly watchable but not all that good. The CGI is pure comedy, but I think that’s part of the appeal. The movie is also so po-faced, it toes the line of becoming a self-parody. This is due in no small part of it being a product of its time. Every serial killer movie released in the wake of “Silence of the Lambs” is an exercise in ham acting. Maybe “Se7en” is the lone exception to the rule. For the most part, it’s otherwise respectable actors going way off the reservation, attacking every line and imbuing their performance with a level of theatricality rarely seen outside of the ’60s “Batman” TV series.
In other words, it’s my kind of movie.
-Brad Lohan