The Thirteenth Floor

Ok, I knew this was going to be pretty weak, but it’s got Gretchen Mol in it!

This is the story of a new game-like program that creates a virtual-reality environment. But the thing is, it goes beyond virtual-reality. It creates lives. It’s creator, Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl from Shine), found this out. Or maybe he found something else out. Something even more devastating. Unfortunately he gets killed before he can tell anybody. He did, however, leave a message inside the new world for one of his co-workers, Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko from The Long Kiss Goodnight and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas). He barely gets to call him and leave a message about the message (don’t ask) before he sees someone he knows in the bar and gets killed by them outside.

So now Doug has to go into this world (a really cool version of 1930s L.A.) and find this message. The problem is that the bartender Fuller gave it to, Ashton (Vincent D’Onofrio), is nosy. He reads it and finds out a little bit too much.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Fuller’s daughter, Jane (Gretchen) shows up. Funny thing is, no one knew that he had a daughter. So where did she come from? Is she as innocent as we all think? Is she going to take advantage of the situation and take over the company?

When the movie started out I thought it was going to be some techno film noir. It started out with a lot of close-ups on cigarettes and a voice-over and all that stuff. Then, when it gets back to our time, it went on to the girl being introduced to the man out of nowhere. They start to fall for each other right away and he starts to be fingered for the murder of his mentor. Then it starts to go off. He suddenly wonders where he was the night of the murder. Was I in bed? Did I get the message that I didn’t think that I got? Did I kill the poor old man? Why am I worrying about this? I really have no reason to wonder about it. There’s nothing in the script until this very moment.

The other thing that really bugged me about this flick is that it was very simplistic. My friend that saw it with me said that it seemed like it was written for a junior high mentality. It followed a map and we never got off the road. There were no surprises at all. It was very easy to figure out.

Of course, then there’s Miss Mol. Absolutely nothing wrong with her. She’s another one in the Jewel/Renee Zelwegger/Joey Lauren Adams vein. Especially in this movie. Are all of these girls the same person? I beginning to think so. How can there be so many girls in Hollywood who look the same right now?

Craig, on the other hand, was an actual mixture of three other people. He looked like some kind of cross between Brendan Fraser, Tom Sizemore and Vince Vaughn. Pretty weird mix, to tell you the truth.

Oh wait. Back to the movie. Basically, it kinda sucked, but in an almost cool way. Pretty much the same as eXistenZ. In fact, it had almost the same ending. Just with a better script. I really liked the story, though. It’s a cool idea (just like eXistenZ). A program within a program. What is real? How do we affect the characters that we draw? How do they affect us? I really like these kinds of movies that play with reality and bring the unreal to the real. (How else do you explain my affinity for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and The Neverending Story? Never thought those two movies would be written in the same breath, did you?) The coolest image in the movie (besides the city at the end that looks like something out of a 50s comic book–when the writer of the novel, Daniel F. Galouye, was writing I think. The book is called Simulcron 3, by the way.) is on the poster above. And it gives away part of the movie! I guess it’s not too much of a giveaway, though. At least it doesn’t tell us that everyone died. DOH! (Just kidding.)

I really wish that the movie had been better. The idea was awesome (something new for producer Roland Emmerich–producer of such brainstumping fare as Independence Day and Godzilla, which director Josef Rusnak was 2nd unit director for), but it needed some complications. It needed some real twists. I guess it wasn’t too bad, it just wasn’t very interesting. It could have been a really good sci-fi flick. Instead it was just mediocre. And I hate mediocre sci-fi. Even bad sci-fi is better. At least you can laugh at it.