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 is a 1995 American science fiction film 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.
Plot
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 200 notorious criminal personalities: mass murderers, serial killers, and megalomaniacs. Programmed using genetic algorithms, each of the 200 killers in SID holds the memories, personality/behavioral traits, and emotional composition of 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 type 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 200 killers, had figured out how to raise the neural sensitivity calibrations in the VR program, causing the pain being received to affect 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 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 generating the persona and form of a sexy virtual prostitute, Sheila 3.2. 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.
Barnes ultimately tracks down SID and manages to damage his body severely by causing it to be impaled on a lot of glass. Before SID could regenerate Barnes removes his core, killing his body, but SID has kidnapped Dr. Madison Carter's daughter. In the meantime Carter has managed to capture Linenmeyer and forces him to help them set up a simulation that causes SID to think he won instead of being impaled and reveal where her daughter is. SID tries to kill Barnes in the virtual world and Lindenmeyer helps him, but Lindenmyer is killed by Carter who frees Barnes. Barnes rescues her daughter and then tosses SID's core drive off a rooftop where it is run over by police cars on the road below, destroying it.
Cast
Cast (in credits order)
Guest cameo as fighter - then reigning UFC Superfight Champion Ken Shamrock
See also
References
External links
