VIRTUOSITY
A film review by D. Agnew
Copyright 1995 D. Agnew
Okay, this review is a little late for those who want to hear about movies the weekend they came out. Sorry about that. On to the review.
Hoo, what a stinker.
Actually, that about says it all, but since this would be rather short if it was just left at that....
In a summer of grade-B action flicks, VIRTUOSITY stands out as a bad movie. MAD MAX WAAAAAY BEYOND THUNDERDOME (or WATERWORLD, as the studio decided to call it) was the kind of movie we would expect to see from Stallone, Ahnuld, etc. BATMAN FOREVER was pretty bad, but not a disaster. The list goes on. VIRTUOSITY, however, reaches new lows even in such a crowd.
Denzel Washington stars as an ex-cop, now con, who is a human guinea pig in a virtual-reality experiment. The "bad guy" is a computer program amalgamation of 100+ mass murderers, although there seems to be some confusion between mass murderers and serial murderers. In this movie, however, if they even managed to get all murderers that is quite an accomplishment. This evil computer program manages to get a body built--don't ask how, it is one of the sillier ideas in a movie rife with them--and predictably goes on a rampage. Equally predicatably, our hero is the only person who can stop the critter. There is the mandatory damsel to get into distress, complete with girl-who-can't-act playing her daughter (do they hold auditions for bad child actors for these movies?), together with just about every other B-movie plot device you have ever seen.
The special effects are well done, and fit the story well. That's about the only good thing to say about the movie. Even for this type of flick, the holes are awful. There are few obvious plot holes as such, so this is not principally a script problem. Rather, there are any number of visual problems: things that just do not make sense; things that obviously cannot work as shown; things that appear done in a very peculiar way for no reason (except presumably to look interesting on screen). To the "You know you're in a bad movie when..." list, add "when the bandage on the hero jumps location between two shots of him going through a door."
What, exactly, does a producer do? If not the producer, is there not someone who is in a position to say to the director, "Bob (<-- madeup name to protect the innocent--or guilty, more like it), I love what you've done with this film so far. The special effects look great. The piles of dough you have shoveled at the special-effects people have been well-spent. The film looks great. Just one tiny thing, though, Bob, and I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but... frankly, Bob, the movie as you've shot it so far really sucks, and if it doesn't get better we're pulling your plug."
One final note--what the hell was Denzel Washington doing in this film? I realize that every actor makes a mistake or two in choosing roles, but it must have been clear pretty early what a piece of garbage this was. At the very least, he should have been told not to work so hard: "Denzel, stop that emoting stuff. This is a two-dimensional character you're playing here, so stop that acting nonsense and let's just shoot the scene and go for a beer." God knows it looks like that was the director's philosophy.
All in all, I can't really say I enjoyed the movie. Don't see this turkey in the theatre. If you happen someday to win a bunch of free rentals at the local video store, and you use up most of them renting every movie in the world in which you have any interest at all, and still have some left over, and spot this one on the shelf--don't rent it.
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