Virtuosity

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This article is about the film. For the term as it refers to artistic or musical ability, see virtuoso.
For a person who is virtuous, see virtue.
Virtuosity

The movie poster for Virtuosity.
Directed by Brett Leonard
Produced by Gary Lucchesi
Written by Eric Bernt
Starring Denzel Washington
Russell Crowe
Music by Peter Gabriel
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date(s) August 4, 1995
Running time 106 min.
Language English
Budget $30,000,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

Virtuosity is a 1995 American science fiction movie 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.

Washington and Crowe would not act together again until 2007's American Gangster.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Tagline: Justice needs a new program

Programmer Dr. Darrel Lindenmeyer of the Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Centre (LETAC) developed SID version 6.7: a Sadistic, Intelligent, and Dangerous virtual reality entity amalgamation of 183 notorious criminal personalities: mass murderers, serial killers, and megalomaniacs. Programmed using genetic algorithms, each of the 183 killers in SID holds the memories, personality/behavioral traits, and emotional composition as the original. Being far too complex to design, Lindenmeyer had 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 sort 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 could catch him, they could catch anyone. First they must prove the concept works, which they decide to do using prisoners as test subjects. While two of the prisoners were inside virtual reality, SID, having the accumulated knowledge of 183 madmen, had figured out how to raise the neural sensitivity calibrations in the VR program, causing the pain being received to be more lethal than real-life. SID killed one of the two prisoner-turned-temporary-police officers by torture through electrocution - a technique not available as one of his programmed methods of killing. The aftermath left the prisoner/contestant dead of severe, concentrated seizures to the major pain receptors of the brain. The other participant, who was taken out of VR before SID finished him off, was left temporarily traumatized.

Witnessing the catastrophe, Commissioner Elizabeth Deane, the director overseeing the SID project, ordered to have it shut down. Later, Lindenmeyer gravely told his 'masterpiece' his fate. SID, in turn, told 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 was actually downloading the persona and form of a sexy virtual prostitute. Less than 30 seconds after the ultimate madman was released into our world, Reilly became SID's first victim. Now in the real world, he is free of all behavioral limits he had in virtual reality, gaining the ability to now grow on his own - rewriting and improving his own programming.

[edit] Cast

Cast (in credits order)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links