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Virtuosity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article does not cite any references or sources. (September 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
- For a person who is virtuous, see virtue.
| Virtuosity | |
|---|---|
 The movie poster for Virtuosity. |
|
| Directed by | Brett Leonard |
| Produced by | Gary Lucchesi |
| Written by | Eric Bernt |
| Starring | Denzel Washington Russell Crowe |
| Music by | Peter Gabriel |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 4, 1995 |
| Running time | 106 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $30,000,000 (estimated) |
| IMDb profile | |
Virtuosity is a 1995 American science fiction movie 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.
Washington and Crowe would not act together again until 2007's American Gangster.
Contents |
Tagline: Justice needs a new program
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 183 notorious criminal personalities: mass murderers, serial killers, and megalomaniacs. Programmed using genetic algorithms, each of the 183 killers in SID holds the memories, personality/behavioral traits, and emotional composition as 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 sort 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 183 madmen, had figured out how to raise the neural sensitivity calibrations in the VR program, causing the pain being received to be more lethal than 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 to have 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 downloading the persona and form of a sexy virtual prostitute. 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.
Police Commissioner Elizabeth Deane (played by Louise Fletcher) is a presidentially-appointed "Crime Czar" whose job it is to develop new systems for controlling the ever-burgeoning problem of urban crime. After witnessing the death of inmate John Donovan during the first test run in virtual reality against SID 6.7, she ordered program director Darrel Lindenmeyer to shut it down.
Madison Carter (played by Kelly Lynch) is a doctor of criminal psychology, writer of criminal psychology non-fiction, and occasionally acts as a consultant for LETAC. She currently has two books published, and is involved in the SID Project as research for her third book. Single mother of Karen Carter.
Police Lieutenant Parker Barnes (played by Denzel Washington) was a decorated police officer who was put on the task of apprehending political terrorist, Matthew Grimes. Known for a single-minded determination that bordered on the obsessive, Grimes hoped to convince Barnes to halt his pursuit in exchange for the lives of Barnes' wife, Linda, and child, Christy. Barnes answered by storming Grimes' underground base of operations, killing all who posed a threat. During this assault, Grimes was having an interview by a television crew. When Barnes came to the cell where his family was held, he hastily opened the door, setting off the trigger to the explosives, killing his family and destroying his left arm. Recovering, Barnes continued through the maze of tunnels until he reached Grimes, killing him with multiple shots to the torso. When the cameraman and reporter jumped around the corner to record the action, Barnes mistook the crew for lackeys of Grimes, shooting them by instinct. For not following protocol and the wrongful deaths of two civilians, Barnes was incarcerated for seventeen years. His arm was replaced by a metallic artificial limb, covered by an artificial skin graft with pseudo-nerve endings that matched his skin tone. Nerve reconditioning was done, returning the loss of feeling to nerve cells destroyed in the blast, and also giving him feeling in his replaced arm, though leaving his back badly scarred.
SID 6.7 (played by Russell Crowe) is an entity created by Dr. Darryl Lindenmeyer of LETAC (Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Center) as an antagonist for police officers in virtual reality simulations. He is composed of 183 personalities, consisting of serial killers, terrorists, and tyrants. While SID has his own personality and behavior, he also gains the personality, behavior, and other traits of these 183 personalities which emerge through SID in the same fashion as a person afflicted with Multiple Personality Disorder. He was programmed using genetic algorithms, enabling SID to improve his own programming in the sense to heighten reaction time, sort out glitches, and to make logical decisions.
Later, utilizing nanotech program designs by Clyde Reily at LETAC, SID was given an android body (referred to as a "nanotech synthetic organism"), allowing him to function outside the confines of virtual reality. As the nanotech synthetic organisms are still in the prototype stages, each android is given an experiment number. SID was experiment no. 1013. It takes 12 hours to incubate a nanotech synthetic organism. The nano cells are programmed to absorb silicon, specifically the kind used in the manufacture of glass, using it as both an energy source and a way to regenerate damage. In an ironic twist of fate, SID's body was killed by falling through a multi-tiered glass ceiling. The character module, the housing unit for SID's "mind", was taken from the body by Parker Barnes and thrown from the skyscraper into the streets below.
In the novelization by Terry Bisson, published by Pocket Books, the ending doesn't have Parker Barnes throw SID's module into the streets from the Gas Company Tower, but instead - at that moment - he has a better idea. Beginning the next chapter, you read of a group of boys playing an arcade game similar to Wild Gunman against a weary SID, where a behavior-constrained SID loses again, and again, and again to a bunch of young boys. It is unknown whether this ending was purely creative freedom from the author or was a previous revision of the script that Bisson had used at the time of creating the novel.
SID's version number was chosen as 6.7 because it is 6.66 rounded up, the number symbolized as the Mark of the Beast.
Below is an alphabetical listing of the 183 killers who comprise SID 6.7's personality list.
- - Al Qadhafi, Moammar
- - Amin, Idi
- - Attila the Hun
- - Ball, Joe
- - Basil II ("The Bulgar Slayer")
- - Bathory, Erzsebet
- - Baughe, William
- - Behram
- - Bianchi, Kenneth ("Hillside Strangler")
- - Bonin, William
- - Bonney, William H. ("Billy the Kid")
- - Boost, Werner
- - Borden, Lizzie
- - Brady, Ian
- - Buffs, Vernon
- - Bundy, Ted
- - Buono, Angelo Jr. ("Hillside Strangler")
- - Burke, David
- - Berkowitz, David ("Son of Sam")
- - Calden, Paul
- - Capone, Al
- - Carignan, Harvey
- - Castro, Fidel
- - Catoe, Jarvis
- - Ceauşescu, Nicolae
- - Chase, Richard Trenton
- - Chikatilo, Andrei
- - Collins, Norman John
- - Corll, Dean
- - Constanzo, Adolfo de Jesus
- - Cooke, Eric Edgar
- - Cotton, Mary Ann
- - Cowan, Frederick
- - Bryan, William
- - Czolgosz, Leon F.
- - Dahmer, Jeffrey
- - Delgado, Campo Elias
- - Dr. De Kaplany, Geza
- - De' Medici, Catherine
- - De Rais, Gilles
- - De Sade, Marquis
- - De Salvo, Albert ("Boston Strangler")
- - Diaz, Robert R.
- - Dillinger, John
- - Dodd, Westley Allen
- - Drake, Lynwood C.
- - Dracula, Vlad ("Vlad the Impaler")
- - Drenth, Herman
- - Duffy, John
- - Duvalier, François ("Papa Doc")
- - Dzhumagaliev, Nikolai
- - Eichmann, Adolf
- - Dr. Engleman, Glennon
- - Essex, Mark
- - Eyler, Larry
- - Farley, Richard
- - Fish, Albert
- - Fromme, Lynette
- - Gacy, John Wayne
- - Gary, Carlton
- - Gary, Lester Harrison
- - Gaskins, Donald
- - Gates, Anne
- - Gein, Ed
- - Gencht, John
- - Genovese, Vito
- - Giancana, Sam
- - Gillis, Lester Joseph ("Baby Face Nelson")
- - Glatman, Harvey
- - Glover, John Wayne
- - Goldstein, Baruch
- - Gosman, Klaus
- - Gotti, John
- - Grant, Waldo
- - Greenwood, Vaughn
- - Grimes, Matthew
- - Grossman, Georg Karl
- - Gunness, Belle
- - Haarmann, Fritz
- - Haigh, John George
- - Harris, Joseph
- - Harvey, Donald
- - Hauptman, Bruno
- - Heidnik, Micheal
- - Heidnik, Gary
- - Heirens, William
- - Henderson, Clem
- - Hendricks, David
- - Hennard, George Jo
- - Hess, Rudolf
- - Hickson, Monroe
- - Hindley, Myra
- - Himmler, Heinrich
- - Hinckley, John
- - Hitler, Adolf
- - Hirohito
- - Horton, Wayne Donald
- - Huberty, James Oliver
- - Hussein, Saddam
- - Ivan IV of Russia ("Ivan the Terrible")
- - James, Jesse
- - Jones, Jim
- - Judd, Winnie Ruth
- - Dr. Kevorkian, Jack
- - Kemper, Ed ("Co-Ed Killer")
- - Khan, Genghis
- - King John
- - Knight, Julian
- - Knowlton, George Frederick ("Black Dahlia")
- - Koch, Ilse
- - Koresh, David
- - Kraft, Randy
- - Kroll, Joachim
- - Kürten, Peter
- - Landru, Henri Desire ("Bluebeard")
- - Lenin, Vladimir Ilich
- - Leonski, Edward
- - Lepine, Mark
- - Lepke, Louis
- - Dr. Lindenmeyer, Darrel (Computer Science Doctorate)
- - Long, Bobby Joe
- - Lopez, Pedro
- - Lucas, Henry Lee
- - Luciano, Charles ("Lucky Luciano")
- - Ludke, Bruno
- - Machiavelli, Niccolò
- - Manson, Charles
- - Maranzano, Salvatore
- - Mary I of England ("Bloody Mary")
- - MacDonald, William ("The Mutilator")
- - McDuff, Kenneth
- - Mengele, Josef ("Angel of Death")
- - Mudgett, Herman Webster
- - Mullin, Herbert
- - Mussolini, Benito
- - Neilson, Donald
- - Nelson, Earle Leonard
- - Nero
- - Nidal, Abu
- - Nilsen, Dennis
- - Lee Harvey Oswald
- - Panzram, Carl
- - Paulin, Thierry
- - Perón, Juan
- - Dr. Petiot, Marcel
- - Pinochet, Augusto
- - Pizarro, Francisco
- - Father Porter, James
- - Pot, Pol
- - Provencher, Gary
- - Richard Ramirez ("Night Stalker")
- - Rasputin
- - Rifkin, Joel
- - Rivera, Miguel
- - Ryan, Michael
- - Sánchez, Ilich Ramírez ("Carlos the Jackal")
- - Selby, Norman
- - Setz, Jerome Ralph
- - Shawcross, Arthur
- - Sherrill, Patrick Henry
- - Simmons, Ronald Gene
- - Sirhan Sirhan
- - Speck, Richard
- - Stafford, Roger Dale
- - Stalin, Joseph
- - Stano, Gerald Eugene
- - Suff, William ("The Riverside Killer")
- - Sutcliffe, Peter
- - Tamerlane
- - Teach, Edward ("Blackbeard the Pirate")
- - Tieri, Frank
- - Tojo, Hideki
- - Torquemada, Tomás de
- - Unruh, Howard
- - Walls, Coral Eugene
- - Weiss, Carl
- - Whitman, Charles
- - Williams, Wayne
- - Woo Bum Kong
- - Randall Woodfield ("The I-5 Killer")
- - Wuornos, Aileen
- - Mao Zedong
- - Zulu, Shaka
Police Chief William Cochran served as a friend and former partner of Lt. Parker Barnes while he served on the Los Angeles Police Force. Though Barnes went against proper police protocol in his apprehension of Matthew Grimes, Cochran sympathized with him due to Grimes killing Barnes' wife and child. While Barnes was incarcerated Cochran visited him, bought him chalk and other supplies, and did what he could to get him out of prison sooner, such as getting him on the list to test the prototype, SID 6.7, in virtual reality.
Cast (in credits order) verified as complete
- Denzel Washington - Lt. Parker Barnes
- Kelly Lynch - Dr. Madison Carter
- Russell Crowe - SID 6.7
- Stephen Spinella - Dr. Darrel Lindenmeyer
- William Forsythe - William Cochran
- Louise Fletcher - Commissioner Elizabeth Deane
- William Fichtner - William Wallace
- Costas Mandylor - John Donovan
- Kevin J. O'Connor - Clyde Reilly
- Kaley Cuoco - Karin
- Christopher Murray - Matthew Grimes
- Johnny Kim - Lab Tech
- Heidi Schanz - Sheila 3.2
- Traci Lords - Media Zone singer
- Gordon Jennison Noice - Big Red
- Mari Morrow - Linda Barnes
- Miracle Vincent - Christine Barnes
- Mara Duronslet - Beautiful woman at Olympic Stadium
- Michael Buffer - Emcee
- Karen Annarino - 'IS' TV reporter
- Miguel Nájera - Rafael Debaca
- Danny Goldring - John Symes
- Randall Fontana - Ed
- Allen Scotti - Surgeon
- Dwayne Chattman - Stripped man in Media Zone
- Ed Marques - Blonde punk in Media Zone
- Cheryl Lawson - Pretty Woman in Media Zone
- Kevin Loreque - Animatronic Bartender
- Eiko Nijo - Geisha Hostess
- Gaura Vani Buchwald - Burly Man in Video Store
- Rolando Molina - Salesman in Video Store
- Gary Anthony Sturgis - Officer at Video Store
- Monica Allison - Woman on Train
- Susan Mohun - Bystander
- David Asman - Metrolink Cop
- Anthony C. Hall - Locator Technician
- Amy Smallman - Aide in Cochran's Office
- Ahmed Ahmed - Cameraman
- Marva Hicks - Onscreen Talent
- Juan A. Riojas - Metromedia Cop
- Steven R. Barnett - Metromedia Cop
- John Walcutt - SWAT Captain
- Michael B. Silver - Undercover Cop
- Jordan Marder - Prison Transport Guard
- Brogan Young - Monitor Prison Guard
- Laura Leigh Hughes - Suburban Reporter
- Dustin Nguyen - Suburban Reporter
- Anthony Winters - Male Newscaster (as Toni Winters)
- Virginia Watson - Anchorwoman
- Beverly Cohen - Tabloid TV Host
- Margot Hope - Paula
- Una Damon - Woman with Video Camera
- Mila Chagall - Woman with Video Camera (as Mary Rachel Foot)
- Jennifer Greenhut - Screaming Woman
- Lesa Noelle - Screaming Woman
- Michelle Smith - Screaming Woman
- Brit Thompson - Screaming Woman
- Alanna Ubach - Eila (scenes deleted)
- Kevin La Presle - Paramedic
- Daniel Anderson - Police Detective
- Eric Bernt - Building Supervisor
- Rob Gomes - SWAT member
- Michael Tamburro - Helicopter Pilot
- Frank Welker - Special Vocal Effects (voice)
- Anthony Backman - Metrolink Patron (uncredited)
- Ken Shamrock - Ultimate Fighting Championship Fighter (uncredited)
- Rogan Wilde - TV News Producer (uncredited)