The prospect of seeing Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe face off in a high concept sci-fi action thriller would be equal parts mouthwatering and intriguing were it announced in 2023, but critics and audiences weren’t exactly sold on the notion when Virtuosity landed with a thud back in the summer of 1995.
The intriguing virtual reality escapade boasted a decent concept, but respective Rotten Tomatoes scores of only 32 and 31 percent from critics and audiences underlined that both parties were equally apathetic to the end result, with an exclamation point being added by the $30 million production huffing and puffing its way to a paltry $37 million haul at the box office.
Of course, it goes without saying that star-powered genre films are a lot easier to sell to the masses on-demand, something Virtuosity has taken full advantage of almost 30 years after its release by becoming one of the Top 10 most-watched features among iTunes subscribers in the United Kingdom, per FlixPatrol.
Washington stars as an ex-cop who ends up being imprisoned for murder after exacting revenge on the man who killed his family, before he gets recruited to test out a new VR program. The goal is to apprehend a criminal made of artificial intelligence, but the real and digital worlds come crashing together when Crowe’s SID 6.7 escapes into the real world.
The potential was definitely there for something special, but the execution was all over the place, to leave Virtuosity as a cult curio and little more.
Published: May 4, 2023 01:54 am