Technology has longed pushed the plots of movies, with yarns about space travel, time travel, miniaturization in bodies travel, cloning, robots, aliens and more. Back about 20 plus years ago, it was virtual mind muckery that had studios clamoring for screen space, setting pace for a new breed of sci-fi thrillers that tried to tap into the fears, phobias, and general mayhem such new horizons might offer.
Things hit a climax of sorts with the release of slew of big budget projects that looked to push that technology to new directions, with The Matrix most especially taking the reins, though others sought to put up a good fight in winning audiences over with big twists and special effects. And that’s what we’re here for today, taking a look back at a swing and miss that had plenty of good ideas in play but stuck spinning its wheels with visuals the producers hoped would pick up the slack for a stilted script. It’s The Thirteenth Floor.
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: It’s 1999 and a wealthy tech-savvy inventor named Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl) has done what would seem impossible, building a fully-functioning virtual simulation of 1937 where not only is the environment entirely immersive, it’s populated by people of such advanced programming, they are for all intents and purposes, sentient. That’s a big deal, and unfortunately – in the real world – it gets our dear inventor Fuller murdered out in the open right in the streets.
He must have known something bad was coming because in the simulated world, he left a letter explaining everything with a barkeep (Vincent D’Onofrio) to hand off to a friend. However, it never gets delivered. Back in the real world again, Fuller’s young protégé and heir to the company – Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko) – finds himself the lead suspect in the killing, harassed by intrepid detective Larry McBain (Dennis Haysbert chewing up scenery like he hadn’t eaten in two weeks). Worse, a mysterious woman (Gretchen Mol) shows up claiming to be Fuller’s long estranged daughter, leading Hall further down the rabbit hole. But who is she really, and how real is everything he believes in? Time for some answers.
REVIEW: The keystone to the entire plot of The Thirteenth Floor is unstable from the start, simply because in a movie circling the drain of VR technology, it’s impossible to accept anything on screen as authentic, at least storywise. This has potential for some ambiguous fun, but here, it’s a major weak link in a chain that is desperate to keep locked up a secret most everyone suspects from the moment we realize what we’re dealing with. However, director Josef Rusnak probably understood that to some degree, and as such, put most of the film’s efforts into building a staggeringly good looking show. Seriously, the production value, most especially the simulated world of 1937, is terrific.
Where it all falls apart is the simplistic screenplay and the exaggerated performances, most particularly D’Onofrio, who, let’s face it, has built a career out of going-over-the-top to great success, but here is wildly distracting as two different characters, both of whom are impossible to get behind. There’s no subtlety, no complexity to these characters, only an actor being textbook lunatic, throwing wrenches into the work of what otherwise might have been a far more engaging story. A scene where he chases Hall is maddenly off-putting simply because he can’t stop hamming it up.
This leaves the film on a seesaw of good and bad, with impressive ideas and a jaw-dropping set design housing a flailing script and a host of performances that take us nowhere, straight to a big finale that is broadcast from the start. Fun for some throwback sci-fi, The Thirteenth Floor is a big budget 100 minutes of plain old average. Opinions may vary.
THAT MOMENT IN: From Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Total Recall to the often overlooked Alex Proyas masterpiece Dark City, a movie centered around such themes relies on its visuals in getting us to the world it builds. So it is with The Thirteenth Floor, a film with – as mentioned above – lots good to look at, thanks to designer Kirk M. Petruccelli. I’ll say it one more time, the atmosphere and genuine feel of the late 30s is a real marvel.
However – and as much as I should spend this post celebrating that achievement – I’m going to instead shift to the hyper modern, and an extended sequence that has us traveling to the past in a wacky sci-fi wet dream machine with all the bells and whistles going off at once.
It happens fairly early in the story, about twenty minutes in after the plot reveals that our hero Douglas Hall believes he might actually have killed his friend and mentor. Thinking the only way to get answers is to find out what secrets Fuller was hiding in his virtual simulation, he decides to give the system a run on his own, something Jason Whitney (also D’Onofrio), the lead programmer on the project, thinks is too dangerous. “It could kill you,” he says ominously. (We’re talking about virtual reality, remember). Yeah sure, they call it “consciousness transfer” but let’s be honest. It’s VR.
Convinced he has no choice, Hall is unswayed, and so, turns on the big array of gadgets and buttons and sets the timer with Whitney’s help, laying himself on the platform so as to be sent to 1937 … in his mind. (Just look at the pic above. Classic.)
And here’s where the film goes the extra mile, and where it also betrays its influence from executive producer Roland Emmerich, who clearly had some say in how the design of such technology should be portrayed on screen. Big. Brash. Silly. Filled with neon lights and dry ice. Check, check and double check. There’s also a bombastic score by Harald Kloser and a push to make this seem far more tense than it is, making this moment simply oozes (gush?) 90s kitsch, looking absolutely ridiculous now. Heck, it did back then, too, but well, more so now.
Still, it’s also ridiculously fun to watch, the senseless green streams of glowing lights, the big red LED timer counting down the 120 minutes Hall can “safely” be under, the array of cabinet sized computer banks whirring in the background, and the clicking at the keyboard of Whitney um, clicking at the keyboard. This is taking the concept of VR tech to such wild extremes, it’s undeniably entertaining, even if the machine is meant to be switching consciousnesses. Honestly, given what is happening, it’s highly doubtful the arena rock band stage show would be all that necessary for pulling off such measures. I mean, geesh, you half expect Alice Cooper to jump from the shadows and starting howling “I Gotta Get Outta Here.” Just in case you’re wondering, he doesn’t. (Also, if you’ve seen the amazing Young Frankenstein, then you’ve already seen the best consciousness swapping scene in movie history).
Either way, I love the little convulsions Hall goes through and then the grunt when the “download is complete” sending us whipping at space speed into his eye and then through a spread of synaptic like blue webbing as if we’re slipping along a wormhole to another dimension. It’s so cheesy and over-the-top, but also wonderfully cinematic in establishing that we’ve left one era for another and entered a world where one man shares two identities. What follows is the best sequence in the whole film. Bravo, The Thirteenth Floor. Bravo.
HEADING FOR THE CREDITS: So, what do we have? A decent idea and a solid production with a weak execution and a slew of weaker performances. It would seem like this should have been a huge hit, but movies like this have limited audience appeal and more so, an audience with a particular taste and capacity for accepting mediocrity. I don’t necessarily recommend this movie – please watch Dark City instead – but if you’re feeling nostalgic for some late twentieth century sci-fi goofiness, you could do worse.