“The Thirteenth Floor”

THREE STARS

Every summer it’s the same thing. There is that one blockbuster original concept which is surrounded by several knockoffs. In 1989, when “The Abyss” came out, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting an underwater adventure sci-fi flick which was touted as “more exciting” than the Ed Harris/ Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio masterpiece.

This summer, the concept being passed around like an underage drunk girl at a frat party is admittedly sophisticated. This summer’s copycat theme is “the simulated world.”

“Is this world real? Am I just a simulation? What if I am just a computer program existing nowhere but in the imagination of a supersmart computer?”

What if people didn’t get enough of this when they saw “The Matrix” at the beginning of the summer?

Well, they could go and see “The Thirteenth Floor,” that’s what.

“The Thirteenth Floor” uses quite a few of the same concepts as “The Matrix” to posit questions about the nature of reality. It takes the concept of reality one step further than “The Matrix,” a fact which will be pretty obvious to anyone who steps into the theater for this flick.

The basic story line is as follows: On the thirteenth floor of a corporate tower, two computer engineers, Douglas Hall and Hannon Fuller (Craig Bierko and Armin Mueller-Stahl) have taken virtual reality technology to the next evolutionary step by creating a version of 1937 Los Angeles on a computer chip.

Hall awakens to find a bloody shirt and Fuller murdered. He has no memory of the event and cannot say whether he did it or not. The murder investigation leads to questions about the nature of reality which appears to be dual.

The film is the usual labored inquiry into the nature of reality and parallel dimensions with a surprise twist which should be easily discerned by anyone who can ask thhimself, “Is there anything freakier than ONE false reality?”

The effects were OK, but then it is easy to create a totally realistic computer simulation when thesimulation is basically the real world. Nothing too mind-blowing in here.

The acting was very competent but one expects a little more from Vincent D’Onofrio, who has given so many cutting-edge performances that he really needs to do something to himself.

One never really cares too much about the characters. This seems par for the course these days when character development takes a back seat to special effects and cool “outside-the-box concepts.” One still likes to care a little bit whether or not someone dies on screen and in this film, one just doesn’t.

Plot-wise, “Floor” raised some questions. Why is no one suspicious about the nature of there world when they can’t leave the city limits? You would think someone would try taking a drive to Las Vegas and get zapped but no, nothing.

The technology is never explained, nor is the reason why it seems to be limited to so few people.

The part of the plot which is revealed late in the film to explain what is going on does little to satisfy the curiosity the viewer develops throughout. Without revealing too much of the plot, our culprit seems a bit weak. After all the audience exposed to in this film, after all of the high-minded philosophizing about reality and parallel existence, one would think the film could end up with something truly disturbing, if not actually mind-altering. But the audience instead is disappointed by how un-earth-shattering all of this really is. It certainly packs less of a punch than the average “Twilight Zone” or “Outer Limits” episode.

There is a transcendental aspect revealed later in the film which suggest the possibility of ascending from one world into the next. As if one could develop a soul from a computerized reality. Thinking about such concepts can give you a chill, but watching it played out in “The Thirteenth Floor” did not.

Wait for the video or go see “The Matrix.”