“Virtual reality as an idea is so broad,” says director Brett Leonard. “It’s about extensions of ourselves being played out insanely in front of us. I think with Virtuosity, the hardware side of VR is being put to rest. We’re now dealing with the question of how the human community is dealing with the emerging technology.”…

Virtuosity, directed by Leonard from a screenplay by Eric Bernt, takes place in Los Angelese in the not-too-distant world of 1999. Crime is running so rampant that a government-funded lab, Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Center, has created a police training device, dubbed SID 6.7, that allows police trainees the opportunity to test their mettle against a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence that’s a composite of the worst criminal tendencies. SID manages to escape his computer environment, takes on physical form and begins a seemingly unstoppable crime spree-until ex-cop Parker Barnes, recently released from prison, is brought in by the government to stop him. Aided by criminal behavior specialist Dr. Madison Carter, Barnes begins the inevitable cat-and-mouse hunt through the city that bounces between the virtual world and the real world…

The director concedes that a film like Virtuosity could easily have been an exercise in paper-thin characterization. “The first thing you do is avoid characters just going along for the rides is to cast Denzel Washington, who never just goes along for the ride. The roots of this movie are in the human truth, and the truth of Parker Barnes is the human tragedy he has been through. He has been in prison for five years, he has lost his family and he has killed innocent people. His story is like a dark James Cagney kind of thing. He brings such a human presence to this movie that all you have to do is point a camera at him. Usually in this kind of film, the heroic characters tend to come off as a little wishy-washy. But Denzel has lent a real solidity to the role.”

According to Leonard, so has Crowe as SID 6.7…. “SID is totally synthetic and, because he’s made up of so many different personality profiles, he’s totally out of touch with reality. And the way Russell plays him, he’s such a fun villain-the perfect bad guy you love to hate. Russell has also been quite successful in bringing a sense of humor to SID.”

Thanks to Gretchen