Virtuosity is a 1995 techno-thriller film directed by Brett Leonard. The movie tells the story of a virtual villain’s successful attempt to escape into the ”real world”. SID 6.7, the villain program portrayed by Russell Crowe, is eventually transplanted into an android body and escapes. Parker Barnes, a reinstated police officer played by Denzel Washington, is given the chance to catch him. The film was shot in and around Los Angeles, California.

Plot:

Programmer Dr. Darrel Lindenmeyer of the Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Centre (LETAC) has developed SID version 6.7: a Sadistic, Intelligent, and Dangerous virtual reality entity amalgamation of 200 notorious criminal personalities: mass murderers, serial killers, and megalomaniacs. Programmed using genetic algorithms, each of the 200 killers in SID holds the memories, personality/behavioral traits, and emotional composition of the original. Being far too complex to design, Lindenmeyer has SID’s program begin with him as a child (sped up in virtual reality), having the killers in his subconscious raise him and guide him in the ways of the world. The killers emerge through the 50 terabyte, self-evolving neural network that is SID through a type of Multiple Personality Disorder, giving way to the stronger personalities depending on each situation.

LETAC would like to train police officers by putting them in full-sensory simulation VR with SID, the idea being that if the cops in the virtual reality simulator can catch him, they can catch anyone. First they must prove the concept works, which they decide to do using prisoners as test subjects. While Parker Barnes (Washington) and another prisoner are inside virtual reality, SID, having the accumulated knowledge of 200 killers, has figured out how to raise the neural sensitivity calibrations in the VR program, causing the pain being received to affect real life. SID kills one of the two prisoner-turned-temporary-police officers by torture through electrocution - a technique Barnes accurately notes is NOT available as one of his programmed methods of killing. The aftermath leaves the prisoner dead of severe, concentrated seizures to the major pain receptors of the brain. Barnes is left traumatized and later has to fight for his life in prison because it has become known he is an ex-cop.

Witnessing the catastrophe, Commissioner Elizabeth Deane, the director overseeing the SID project, orders it shut down. Later, Lindenmeyer gravely tells his ’masterpiece’ his fate. SID, in turn, tells Lindenmeyer an alternative: tricking Clyde Reilly, a befriended coworker at LETAC, into turning SID’s persona into a regenerating android (better known as a ’nanotech synthetic organism’), by making him think he is actually generating the persona and form of a sexy virtual prostitute, Sheila 3.2. Less than 30 seconds after the ultimate madman is released into our world, Reilly becomes SID’s first victim. Now in the real world, he is free of all behavioral limits he previously had in virtual reality, gaining the ability to now grow on his own - rewriting and improving his own programming. The cops remember that Barnes was the only subject who could keep up with SID in the simulator and decide they need to use him to stop the virtual-turned-actual killing machine.

Barnes is given an offer by LETAC: he will be temporarily released to track down SID, but he is also injected with a radioactive device that will ”terminate” him via satellite uplink if he fails. Barnes ultimately tracks down SID (after he kills dozens of people, and after several high-speed chases) and manages to damage his body severely by causing it to be impaled on a sheaf of glass. Before SID can regenerate, Barnes removes his core, killing his body. But SID has kidnapped the daughter of Dr. Madison Carter, a psychologist who has also been assigned to the case and has been accompanying Parker all along, and who has followed Parker throughout his exploits on this case. In the meantime Carter’s superior [William Cochran] has managed to capture Lindenmeyer and force him to help them set up a simulation that causes SID to think he won instead of being impaled and reveal where her daughter is, all in VR. Lindenmeyer bludgeons Cochran to death, then sits down and rapturously observes as SID ramps up Barnes’ sensitivity in the virtual world to nigh-unbearable levels. Lindenmyer is killed by Carter after she breaks free; she then frees Barnes. Barnes rescues her daughter where she held in an air duct after figuring out Sid’s puzzle, then tosses SID’s core drive off a rooftop, where it is run over by police cars on the road below, destroying it.

Cast:
Cast (in credits order)

Denzel Washington - Lt. Parker Barnes
Russell Crowe - SID 6.7
Kelly Lynch - Dr. Madison Carter
Stephen Spinella - Dr. Darrel Lindenmeyer
William Forsythe - William Cochran
Louise Fletcher - Commissioner Elizabeth Deane
William Fichtner - William Wallace
Costas Mandylor - John Donovan
Kevin J. O’Connor - Clyde Reilly
Kaley Cuoco - Karin
Christopher Murray - Matthew Grimes
Johnny Kim - Lab Tech
Heidi Schanz - Sheila 3.2
Traci Lords - Media Zone singer
Gordon Jennison Noice - Big Red

Music:

Peter Gabriel, Debbie Harry, Lords of Acid, Black Grape, Juno Reactor, Tricky, Dig, Fatima Mission, et al.

Reception:

The film received mixed to negative reviews. It has a rotten score of 33% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 30 reviews.

1995

MA15+

5903570130632

Movie

2.35:1

101

United States

MPEG-4 AVC

1080i

16:9

N/A

Free

CED Caddy

2018-02-07 21:16:11