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Rating: 1 out of 5
In 1995, Denzel Washington starred alongside Russell Crowe in this action/science fiction film called Virtuosity. Denzel had already won the Academy Award for Glory but wasn’t entirely at the level of “King Kong ain’t Got Shit on Me!” This was way before Russell Crowe was Russell Crowe and the whole, “Are You Not Entertain?!” I would say that you would be entertained by this whole movie, but I have watched it twice and still not impressed with what I have seen. Good thing these two came back together years later to make American Gangster because this film significantly underwhelmed each skill and craft. Well, gentlemen, King Kong does have shit on you, and I was NOT entertained.
What is this film about? In the distant future, the Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Centre (LETAC) has developed SID version 6.7 (Crowe). Sid stands for Sadistic, Intelligent, Dangerous, and a VR amalgam of the most violent serial killers’ personalities throughout history. SID currently has over 150 serial killers in its programming. Let’s take a second to think about this. The most violent serial killers EVER in one computer system. My question is, why? Why the hell do people create things like this. LETAC would like to use SID to train police officers by putting them in VR with side. One of the major obstacles is that the whole programming could cause the death of the participant. Besides using the men in blue, they use prisoners to test out the entire system. One of the prisoners that they use is ex-cop Parker Barnes (Washington). The director of the project sees the falls as asks the programmer to shut down the whole program. SID, hearing this and wanting to live, manages to have the programmer inject his personality into a nano-machine android. Lose on the world, the only person capable of tracking SID down is Barnes that has a beef with one of SID personalities.
I don’t know what to think about this whole story. It was like watching a mad man run around and a cop trying to chase him. I guess what I wanted to know is what personality was in charge because it primarily seemed like one dominant serial killer was in charge. There was zero change in the way SID did anything. He was always looking for the biggest crowd to show his craft. If you know a little about some serial killers, they would seem to kill their victim and not look for that crowd to flaunt. This is shown with SID screaming at people in a club to scream in terror or going to a cage fight to be the center of attention.
Also, what was going on with SID. He seems like a futuristic version of the Terminator but sucked way more. This is like giving the robots far more prominent personalities, but no matter what, SID is always able to come back from eating glass. Yep, glass regenerates SID to full health. No matter how many times he is shot, limbs get shot off, or whatever, he pops in some glass, and he is all good. You want to talk about a personality, once again, which one was in charge because when the dude walked around in that purple suit, I didn’t know what was going on.
For the human side, Parker is just a character that seems to do the same thing over and over again. If you shot a woman on a train, why would you do it all over again? Yet, he finds himself in the same situation, but this time he somewhat learned. Also, what was the actual purpose of Madison? To me, all she did was yell at Barnes or whoever, questions his motives, and then, when things went down, did some stuff sometimes.
Virtuosity is one of those films that used other films as inspiration and fails dramatically. SID is like the Terminator but has more personalities than a fruit cake. This film is over-the-top and yet bores in many areas like character development, action, and overall appeal. VR has come a long way.
