Starring: Craig Bierko, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Gretchen Mol, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dennis Haysbert Directed By: Josef Rusnak Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Full Screen, Special Edition, NTSC Label: Columbia Pictures Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: October 05, 1999 Running Time: 100 minutes Theatrical Release Date: May 28, 1999
Amazon.com: Computer scientist Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl) finds something extremely important. Knowing that he's marked for assassination, he leaves a message in the virtual reality world he's designed, hoping it will be found by colleague Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko). Hall is a suspect in Fuller's murder and indeed finds a bloody shirt in his house, with no recollection of what he did the night before. Hall plunges headlong into Fuller's world (a re-creation of 1937 Los Angeles) to try to unravel the slaying and is soon knee-deep in confusion and trouble. What this film lacks in character depth and plot cohesiveness it makes up for in special effects and high concept. Fans of films like Blade Runner, Dark City, eXistenZ, and even the game Sim City should find this appealing. Of course, there's the question of letting the computers do all the heavy lifting in films while the humans walk through the plot (an all-too-familiar scenario in 1999), but the re-creation of '30s Los Angeles is certainly something to see, pallid script and acting or not. The Thirteenth Floor is a stylish modern-day noir that raises questions about technology versus reality, all the while wrapped up in a murder-mystery story line. --Jerry Renshaw
There is no future any more One more film on various worlds, one on top of the other and the possible transfer from one to the other through some virtual reality system. Fine with me. But one layer is positioned as dominant and it is the most advanced in time that is. Why? Why not ours? Our time becomes nothing but the past of some other future time that is the real present. That is traumatic since after a while you do not know who is who and who is real or not in any world. Some are not even real at all in any world. The worse part is that you can just get rid of anyone in any layer of time in the past because your real existence is in the future present, the real future present world of 2024. So who cares about what havoc you may cause and create and enjoy in some past layer of the world? But it has no effect on the future because the film states that that future of 2024 is the real thing that commands all the past layers? But why not 3024? And what if 2024 were nothing but some manipulated past of 3024? Disquieting because then time does not exist any more, everything is in the hands of some super-being we don't know. In other words the film reinvents God, not as a real being but as a virtual necessity, a concept without which nothing stands. The film is well done, but the meaning is some absolute submission to some kind of fatality that makes us puppets, and the word is even used. We become irresponsible of our acts and that takes the pleasure out of our life because real pleasure depends on danger and danger depends on risk and risks are always faced in the present never in some kind of past or out of time.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Rent it, Buy it, but definitely See it. The underlying premise is simple: HOW do we know we are real, or WHAT precisely IS reality? This movie can't answer that and after careful consideration it is obvious that NO ONE can. The safest thing to do is to fall back on Descartes' "I think, therefore I am". The alternative is lose oneself in a lifelong search for truth or possibly getting trapped in an endless loop of thought.
Although there are better movies (even sci-fi movies) to watch this one is highly entertaining and well worth seeing more than once. My personal preference is in WIDESCREEN format.
Great sci-fi movie! I watched this on TV before purchasing it for my library.
The Thirteenth Floor implies ghosts, goblins & spooky stuff. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It's a FANTASTIC virtual reality film!
I recommend it totally and have watched it more than once.
Great Movie - Very disappointing disk When I first saw this movie on cable about seven years ago I was very pleasantly surprised how entertaining and thought provoking it was. I won't get into a lot of details except to say that I like the way the movie makes you think and the scenery and costumes of 1937 LA is very convincing and contrasts greatly with the dark, chrome and glass look of the present day LA. I think the acting is about perfect for a quiet style of movie and I felt a connection to all of the characters. A couple of years ago I rented The Thirteenth Floor and enjoyed it even more in the Widescreen format. I bought myself a small widescreen HD TV last year and decided to purchase a copy of this movie from Amazon. I was greatly disappointed to find out that it is only Full screen and not Widescreen. It is also annoying that the subtitles are defaulted to be on so you have to turn them off first. I ordered this movie from another company that specifically advertised Widescreen and it too is only Full screen so I returned it. I have since found out that Sony has screwed around with many of its movies and is only releasing them in Full screen format and The Thirteenth Floor is one of them. Apparantly a Widescreen version is no longer available which is a shame because this is one movie that needs to be seen in widescreen.
A Much Underrated Sci-Fi Film This visual pleasure was seriously overshadowed by the Matrix that came out the same year. Unlike the other masterpiece, which was armed with an ambition of an epic in cinema, The Thirteen Floor is more creative in that there is no self-righteous mission of an entire population to fight against the Internet. There is no immediate indication that leads the audience to the division between physical reality and the virtual one--at least not until the latter half of the film. Instead, what it presents to us is layers of virtual reality, or illusion, if you may. But it also can be understood as infinite layers of reality, depending on precisely how you interpret it. Besides all these philosophical headaches and debates on metaphysics, what is most important is it is an intriguing story--with amazingly hot actors and actresses. It would be a shame to miss it.
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