Viking Night: Virtuosity
By Bruce Hall
March 1, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
For the record, I’m referring to Killer Klowns from Outer Space, which is not so much a “good” movie as it is one that I didn’t know I needed. I don’t know if it’s the first film about an insane clown army gorging itself on human flesh, but it’s definitely the most recent. It’s worth viewing just for the part where one of the Klowns liquefies a guy and then drinks him like a milkshake.
And then there’s The Lawnmower Man, 1992’s mostly bonkers idea of how virtual reality was supposed to work. Anyone who’s seen it knows that its vision of the future was wildly off base, even by Hollywood standards. They also know it as Pierce Brosnan’s second most unfortunate career choice, next to Die Another Day. Then again, if you’ve ever wondered what Jeff Fahey would look like if you shaved everything but his big meaty forearms, I think I have a picture I can recommend.
Now, I do jest a bit here, because I actually am a big fan of both those movies. Killer Klowns from Outer Space truly IS a bad movie, but it’s also about Killer Klowns from Outer Space. All it needed to do was deliver on the title. The Lawnmower Man is what happens when Hollywood becomes enamored with some new form of computer technology and makes no effort to understand it before making a movie about it. Sometimes this works out well despite itself (see WarGames).
Other times, it ends up being a bunch of decent actors struggling to understand what’s happening as they cower in front of green screens and shout perplexing dialog at each other. It becomes a disappointing casserole of struggle, confusion, suffering, and whatever passes for cutting edge CGI at the time. Guess which kind of movie The Lawnmower Man is? Guess who seems to have learned nothing from the experience? So guess which other movie is pretty much like that?
But I said I liked The Lawnmower Man, right? I do, and it’s because Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey were both better than the material around them, thereby making it watchable. Virtuosity just so happens to star future Denzel Washington, who was already a star at the time, and some loudmouth named Russell Crowe. I’m not sure their presence completely saves the movie, but it’s hard to imagine it being watchable without them.
The story, if you haven’t heard it before (you have), goes something like this:
Washington plays Parker Barnes, a disgraced former cop unjustly jailed for murdering the man who killed his stunning wife and adorable child. When we meet him, he’s been furloughed from prison to participate in an experimental program. It seems the LAPD want to use virtual reality to train their officers to deal with violent offenders. There are some concerns about the safety of the procedure, so they’re testing it out on convicts. And why would anyone be concerned about the safety of a virtual reality program, you ask?
Why, because this is 1995, and nobody knows that when you get shot in the face playing Call of Duty with your Oculus Rift, your head doesn’t explode in real life. I don’t even know why anybody would intentionally design it to work that way, or even how they might do it accidentally. Why is this technology even capable of killing you? I’ve seen cops train with paintball. Would anyone play paintball if there were a realistic chance of having your chest cavity exploded?
But of course, that’s the way it works in movies. And that’s the way it works when Parker’s dispensable partner gets murdered by SID 6.7, the boss fight at the end of the program. SID is what the LAPD hopes to put their recruits up against to teach them how to take down vicious killers. Unfortunately, SID’s creator programmed him with the personalities of history’s most notorious killers. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you crammed Charles Manson, Genghis Khan, Hitler and Ted Bundy into one guy?
Not surprisingly, what you get is a dangerously psychotic maniac with massive impulse control issues. You also get a guy who looks like a dashing young Russell Crowe, before he developed his own massive impulse control issues.
For some reason, LAPD chief Cochran (the great William Forsythe) is shocked to find that this is what happens when you make Hitler soup, and shuts the operation down. Meanwhile, the scientists behind SID, including beautiful psychologist Madison Carter (Kelly Lynch), seem just as confused. This is a movie about computers, remember, so there’s a lot of impenetrable talk about databases, neural nets, and an obviously fictional technology called a “video cassette recorder.”
It’s all pulled from the Hollywood Technical Manual of Bullshit, of course, but you can’t make a technological thriller without someone screaming at some point about how the “fail safes were supposed to be online.”
There I go again, off on a tangent. So, Parker goes back to prison (which is filled with Nazis, for some reason). For reasons that are sexy, stupid AND irrelevant, SID manages to escape the simulation and acquire an android body. That’s right. The LAPD is making androids now, but that’s not even the best part. SID already acts like a cross between The Joker and Max Headroom. Now, he has a cool T-1000 body that can do free standing backflips and repair itself from any injury by touching glass.
Wow. Why is this film using virtual reality as the hook when it’s got Denzel Washington fighting a Terminator?
SID, naturally, goes on an immediate murder spree. Instead of calling in a SWAT team, or the Navy Seals, Cochran decides that Parker Barnes is the only man who can catch SID. Obviously Parker is released, and obviously he is paired with Dr. Carter, who has no law enforcement experience whatsoever. And... that’s pretty much it. The rest of the film is Denzel vs. The Terminator. Although as I said, Crowe’s performance as SID is intentionally over the top, to the point where he even starts dressing and cackling like a certain Crown Prince of Crime.
Kind of makes me wish Denzel was Batman (make it happen, Hollywood).
As you can see, Virtuosity is cobbled together using tropes from a variety of genres. It’s part techno-thriller, part police procedural, part revenge fantasy, and part computer illiteracy clinic. The technological aspect of Virtuosity is, of course, unrealistic - which on its own isn’t an issue. But like I said, I’m not sure why anyone cares about VR when you can apparently make killer robots out of old car windshields. And of course, none of the decisions made by any of the characters at any point in the story makes any sense whatsoever. Remember that time in college when you drank a pint of Wild Turkey on a dare and woke up 500 miles away, wearing someone else’s clothes?
THAT makes more sense than Virtuosity.
Still, I found myself having fun with it anyway. No, nothing makes any sense, but there IS a logical progression of plot. There IS a lot of action. There’s even a part where Crowe makes music out of the desperate screams of a room full of hostages (again...why so serious…?). But again, as with Brett Leonard’s previous virtual reality themed whack-fest, Virtuosity manages to survive on account of some surprisingly decent performances.
And I’m not referring to Russell Crowe. As I mentioned earlier, his performance is clearly meant to be over the top. And the character IS meant to be made up of many personalities. Still, it somehow still misses the mark. Not in an “Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls” kind of way - it fits this character more closely - but in a “Jared Leto from Suicide Squad” kind of way. At first, I wasn’t sure if I liked it or hated it. Then I realized the answer was “neither.” I wasn’t completely put off, but I also don’t need to see that character in another movie ever again.
Meanwhile, Denzel brings it. This might as well be Training Day. It doesn’t matter. The man spouts line after line of incomprehensible gibberish with the polish of a professional. When he pauses for one of an interminable series of “dead family” flashbacks, you FEEL it. William Forsythe is probably never going to win an Oscar, but if you love him like I do, you know why he’s been in everything. Kelly Lynch is as competent as she needs to be, both as a criminal psychologist and - later - as a mother scared out of her mind.
I’m telling you man, Denzel raises all boats.
I actually had not seen Virtuosity before this, and while I probably won’t ever watch it again, I’m happy as hell that I did. I’ve never stopped to think of how Denzel Washington would defeat Robert Patrick in a fistfight. I never dreamed that I’d want to see a Batman movie starring Malcolm X and that guy from Gladiator.
Thank you, Brett Leonard. Thank you for the Klowns, thank you for putting James Bond in the Matrix, and thank you - most of all - for Virtuosity.