'13th Floor' doesn't live up to its ambitions by Wallace Baine Santa Cruz Sentinel B-
Techies and software geeks need not get too jacked up over the glossy new cyber-thriller `The Thirteenth Floor.' Sure, a really cool supercomputer is at the center of things, but for all its nifty lighting effects, it might as well be a Sharper Image version of an H.G. Wells-inspired way-back machine. Those waiting for a sophisticated fable about the computerized tomorrow won't get too much sustenance from what is primarily nothing more than a servicable noir borrowing plot points from virtual reality. This stylish potboiler brings up fascinating questions, but leaves them on the table. Not nearly as jarring an experience as `The Matrix,' to which it is destined to be compared, `The Thirteenth Floor' -- like `The Matrix' -- plays with the notion of computer-invented planes of reality. But what makes the thing go is a time-honored cinematic formula: dark interiors, a mysteriously sad-eyed girl, a suspicious cop, a perplexed and paranoid hero and an unsolved murder. Film Noir 101. For such a high-profile pre-summer release (it comes from the same creative team that afflicted us with `Godzilla'), `13th Floor' is pleasingly star-less. The able cast is headed up by Craig Bierko (`The Long Kiss Goodnight'), a kind of poor woman's Vince Vaughn, who stars as Douglas Hall, a software hot-shot working closely with his mentor, the aged computer science pioneer Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl). The two men are on the verge of realizing a life-long ambition: the creation of a virtual reality machine that re-creates a simulated world so real, the computer-generated `people' have separate minds and free will. The simulated world is Los Angeles, 1937, the period of Fuller's youth. While the younger Hall is out of town, Fuller dives into his virtual-reality machine before the kinks are ironed out to throw his money around in nightclubs and bed down Depression-era show girls (talk about your killer apps!). One night, after one of these virtual joyrides, Fuller is murdered in a dark alley and Hall, waking up not able to remember the night before, finds a bloody shirt in his apartment. An intimidating cop (Dennis Haysbert) fingers Hall as the prime suspect and Hall, not able to provide an alibi, dives into virtual 1937 in search of clues on who could have murdered Fuller, against the wishes of his techie assistant Whitney (Vincent D'Onofrio, looking like a young John Malkovich). Enter Jane (Gretchen Mol of `Rounders'), Fuller's mysterious but beautiful daughter (whom Hall, Fuller's closest confidant, had never heard of). Shooting off major seduction sparks in Hall's direction, Jane moves with agility to claim Daddy's company. If that weren't enough, Hall runs across more mysterious characters in 1937 (filmed in nicely burnished browns and golds). A suspicious bartender, a virtual twin of his co-worker Whitney, holds the key to what happened to Fuller. But the bartender, oozing malevolence, misleads a baffled Hall and sets out on his sluething adventure. The bartender -- who is, remember, just a computer-generated `unit' -- finds out the truth of his existence and leads Hall to the humbling realization that he might not be `real' either. Follow me so far? Loosely adapted from Daniel F. Galouye's novel `Simalacron-3,' `13th Floor' works on the proposition, as does `The Matrix,' that one's consciousness can be downloaded into a living, breathing replica of one's self in a artificially constructed world. It doesn't measure up to `The Matrix,' however, in explaining the dangers and consequences of such reality tampering, instead diluting its sci-fi ambitions with whodunit cliches. The film's reach exceeds its grasp when it settles into murky, existential philosophizing on the nature of reality. The most advanced thinking in computer science does indeed touch on the profound questions of consciousness and perception. While `13th Floor' admirably ventures out onto the shaky limb of such paradoxes, it does so in a facile manner, postulating on what possibly isn't real but never really addressing is real. The film's most clever representation is, in fact, its view of 1937 LA, balanced with just enough glitzy back-lot Hollywood touches to slyly suggest that if we are able to create simulated worlds of the past, they will be modeled more on romantic, movie-fed images of the past rather than strictly historical models. Also, with the sober-minded professor Fuller behaving in his made-up 1937 like Bill Clinton at a sorority mixer, the film tantalizingly opens the question of whether morality and personal conduct have any meaning in computer-generated worlds of pure fantasy. These intriguing themes bow, however, to the demands of a rather rote murder mystery, creating a faint but lingering air of disappointment -- an emotion still unique to us carbon-based CPUs.
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