The Thirteenth Floor
Short description
In Los Angeles in 1999, Hannon Fuller, a wealthy computer expert, has created a detailed virtual version of the city as it looked in the 1930s and spends time there alongside his ordinary life. The servers running that simulated world sit on the thirteenth floor of his company's building, and users can enter it fully conscious, interacting with its computer-generated inhabitants as if they were real people. After Fuller makes a troubling discovery in the real world, he is murdered before he can explain it to his associate Douglas Hall. Fuller leaves a message for Hall inside the simulation, and Hall enters the virtual Los Angeles to find it, becoming a suspect in the killing himself. Among the characters he meets there is a bartender named Ashton.
Josef Rusnak directed and co-wrote the film with Ravel Centeno-Rodriguez; Roland Emmerich, Ute Emmerich and Marco Weber produced it. Craig Bierko plays Douglas Hall, with Armin Mueller-Stahl as Hannon Fuller, Gretchen Mol as Jane Fuller, Vincent D'Onofrio as Whitney and Dennis Haysbert as Detective Larry McBain. It was Rusnak's first feature as director, followed years later by The Contractor, The Art of War II: Betrayal and Berlin, I Love You.
Released in April 1999, the film cost about 16 million dollars and took in roughly 19 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7 out of 10 from around 82,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.1 out of 10 from about 1,600 votes. A critics' rating of 5.1 out of 10 from 63 reviews sits well below those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film was released alongside the Wachowskis' "The Matrix" and was largely overlooked in comparison.
- "The Thirteenth Floor" was released simultaneously with the famous "The Matrix" by the Wachowskis and was largely overlooked in its wake.
- When Jane Fuller runs away from her husband, the elevator is seen leaving the 13th floor (according to the elevator buttons), although she was previously lying with him in bed in a room located above the 13th floor.
- The film was shot in Los Angeles.
- In the virtual 1937, Fuller mentions World War I. However, in 1937, before World War II, World War I was called the Great War. Nevertheless, this can be considered an error not of the filmmakers, but of the creators of the program simulating 1937 Los Angeles. A number of other anachronisms in the virtual Los Angeles—such as the too-new money and patrol car—can also be seen as programming errors.
- The film is based on the novel "The Thirteenth Floor" (Simulacron-3, 1964) by Daniel F. Galouye. The novel is one of the earliest literary depictions of virtual reality.
- At the end of the film, when Douglas is reading the newspaper, it displays the date as Monday, June 21, 2024. In reality, June 21, 2024, is a Friday.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
