Virtuosity movie review & film summary (1995) | Roger Ebert (2024)

Los Angeles, 1999. A city of zombies in gray business suits,walking unseeing in the streets. Only two people seem aware of theirsurroundings. One of them is Parker Barnes (Denzel Washington), who moveseasily through the crowds, in search of something. His quest leads to aJapanese restaurant, where there is a bloody struggle with a bad guy who hastaken hostages. There is a shoot-out, which does not develop quite as itshould. . . .

Andthis has all been a computer game, as we suspected, since some of the shots of thesky fluttered as if the screen were repainting itself. Back in the real world,Barnes is revealed as a former cop, now in prison, with a computer-controlledartificial arm.

Andthe game is explained as virtual reality training for police, to help them copewith sudden emergencies.

In"Virtuosity," Barnes finds himself in familiar fictional territory:This is yet another retread of the familiar formula where the rogue cop isreactivated because he is the only person who can deal with the brilliant anddangerous villain. But here the movie turns up a new twist. The bad guy in"Virtuosity" is not a human being but a computer program named Sid6.7, which plays the villain in the VR simulations.

Sid6.7 (given human form by Russell Crowe) is some program.

Intohis cyber memory has been pumped the personalities of 200 criminals, includingCharles Manson, John Wayne Gacy - and the man who killed Barnes' own wife andchildren. Sid is so intelligent he knows how to tap into his many personalitiesin order to torment his enemies, and he taunts Russell with memories of hisfamily.

AndSid has other abilities. We see how new science has made it possible forcomputer chips to replicate themselves, using the raw material of silicon. Sidpulls off a really neat trick, escaping from the "box," or computer,and creating himself in the real world.

(Thereis a nice moment as he takes shape, slumps for a second, and then understandsthe sensation he is feeling: "Gravity!") Sid takes physical shape asa mandroid, escapes from the lab and becomes a serial killer at large - 200serial killers at large. There are two catches. One is that Sid 6.7, programmedwith artificial intelligence, can now grow on his own, rewriting and improvinghis own programs. The other is that Sid is interactive down to the tiniest electronin his cybersoul. He is not happy unless he's involved in a battle with hisantagonists, since the world of computer gaming is all he knows.

ForBarnes, who for a cop is unusually knowledgeable about computer programming,this is the ultimate challenge, and "Virtuosity" is clever in theways it finds to morph the situation.

Oneproblem is that Sid, like the mercurial villain in "Terminator 2: JudgmentDay," is hard to kill because he has control over his physicalmanifestation. Shot many times, his limbs lopped off, he regenerates by usingsilicon (even eating glass, which is always appropriate for a villain). Lackingall the higher human instincts, he is a real rotter, at one point ordering hishostages to scream and then conducting them like an orchestra (this is a stealof an old Second City routine, but never mind).

Forthe merely human Parker Barnes, Sid evokes memories of the dead family andplays cruel jokes: Like all true computer games, he exists to be played, and ina sense he would be defeated even in victory because then the game would beover, and he would be inactive again. So involved does he become, indeed, thatSid 6.7 loses track of exactly what side of the cybermembrane he's on, and atone point is astonished to find he has returned to virtual reality and is nolonger in the real world: "I'm back in the box?" The movie suppliesBarnes with a partner, Madison (Kelly Lynch), but she in a way is even more ofa cyber creation than Sid, because she has no particular function except to bethe token female sidekick: good-looking, supportive, able to be endangered whennecessary, etc. The real battle is between Barnes and Sid 6.7 (and Sid'sprograms, including the nicely named BombShop 6.7).

"Virtuosity"is an example of a struggle that goes on in Hollywood between formula andinvention. The movie is filled with bright ideas and fresh thinking, but theunderlying story is as old as the hills, right down to a final confrontation oncatwalks (there is nothing quite like a catwalk for satisfying scenes in whichcharacters hang by one arm, bash each other with pipes, fall to their dooms,etc.). What redeems "Virtuosity" a little is that even at the end,even in the midst of the action clichés, it still finds surprises in theparadox of a villain that is also a program.