Virtuosity
Short description
Virtuosity is set in a near-future Los Angeles where a law enforcement agency has built a virtual reality training system around Sid 6.7, a computer-generated criminal assembled from the profiles of dozens of notorious killers. The program is meant to test police officers against a simulated adversary, but Sid escapes the boundaries of the virtual world and takes physical form, leaving a trail of violence behind him. Parker Barnes, a former officer with a troubled past, is released to hunt him down.
Brett Leonard directed the film, which followed his earlier science fiction work The Lawnmower Man and sits second among the six features listed for him. Eric Bernt wrote the screenplay, Gary Lucchesi produced, and Paramount backed the production. Denzel Washington stars as Parker Barnes, with Russell Crowe as Sid 6.7, Kelly Lynch as Madison Carter, Alanna Ubach as Ella, William Forsythe as William Cochran and Stephen Spinella as Lindenmeyer. The credited cast runs to 73 names and the crew to 85.
Released in August 1995, the film cost about 30 million dollars and returned roughly 24 million worldwide, so it did not recover its budget at the box office. Audiences were lukewarm: on IMDb it holds 5.5 out of 10 from around 35,000 votes, and on TMDB the same 5.5 from about 636 votes. A critics' rating of 4.4 out of 10 from 37 reviews indicates reviewers were less favourable still.
What's left behind the scenes
- This is Kaley Cuoco's first feature film.
- In 1995, Terry Bissonn wrote a novelization of Eric Bernet's screenplay with the same title.
- According to Kelly Lynch, the script originally included a kiss between her and Denzel Washington. Washington insisted that the kissing scene be removed from the script, as he believed that this scene involving actors of different races would negatively impact box office receipts.
- The film was released two years after Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" (1993), considered a masterpiece of computer graphics, but the graphics in "Virtuosity" are much more primitive.
- Several songs performed by Russell Crowe's band "30 Odd Foot of Grunts" were used as the soundtrack.
- Sid in the film consists of a substance called Nanogoo. In reality, Nanogoo was made from "Log Cabin" syrup mixed with blue eyeshadow.
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