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Title: Virtuosity (1995)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Denzel Washington | ... | Lt. Parker Barnes | |
| Kelly Lynch | ... | Madison Carter | |
| Russell Crowe | ... | SID 6.7 | |
| Stephen Spinella | ... | Lindenmeyer | |
| William Forsythe | ... | William Cochran | |
| Louise Fletcher | ... | Elizabeth Deane | |
| William Fichtner | ... | Wallace | |
| Costas Mandylor | ... | John Donovan | |
| Kevin J. O'Connor | ... | Clyde Reilly | |
| Kaley Cuoco | ... | Karin Carter | |
| Christopher Murray | ... | Matthew Grimes | |
 |
Heidi Schanz | ... | Sheila 3.2 |
| Traci Lords | ... | Media Zone Singer | |
| Gordon Jennison Noice | ... | Big Red (as J. Gordon Noice) | |
| Mari Morrow | ... | Linda Barnes | |
The Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Centre (LETAC) has developed SID version 6.7: a Sadistic, Intelligent, and Dangerous virtual reality entity which is synthesized from the personalities of more than 150 serial killers. LETAC would like to train police officers by putting them in VR with SID, but they must prove the concept by using prisoners as test subjects. One such prisoner is ex-cop Parker Barnes. When SID manages to inject his personality into a nano-machine android, it appears that Barnes might be the only one who can stop him. Written by Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>
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Virtuosity is by no means a great movie or a good movie. It is barely above average. That though is because of Russell Crowe's character: SID 6.7 who possesses over 150 serial killer personalities. He is just supposed to be used to train police but he escapes from his virtual reality to the reality. That sounds pretty interesting and this premise could be taken into many different directions especially since he is such a complex character you could go so many different way going about to make this film. Though this movie did not take the worst direction it did not take the best one. This movie went for pure action and no real drama or meaningful message. Now that is OK but it lacked in doing this because of the: The directing which was average by Brett Leonard. He made this into a very exciting TV movie which it is not. He had two very talented actors in Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe yet he was not able to generate the excitement and fast pace feeling that is needed to make a good action movie.
The writing is also at fault too. The writing was not great here. It seemed to have a lot of overused themes such as the cop trying to retain the high status that he used too have and also the idiot cops getting in the way. That is also OK but the dialog made this interesting idea into a movie that was not so unfamiliar. Not much originality in here despite having such a unique character. That is always the script's fault whenever this happens. The writing and directing just made this movie so frustrating to watch.
You cannot blame the acting. You could see that Denzel Washington, already an established actor at that time, and Russell Crowe, not established, really tried to push this movie forward. Yet there was little to work with which made them look really average.
This movie could have been much better if it was made more into a action/drama about the our inner battles. Considering that SID 6.7 had 150 personalities the storyline of his character could have made him have a battle within himself. Now this was done to a minor level which really annoyed me. They are many other ideas or methods that could have really made this movie something but of course this did not happen. It went for cheap effects, an over used clichéd storyline with a little bit of a twist. That may work for some people but not for me.
I'am giving this movie a 6/10 rating because it had so much potential.