The Thirteenth Floor Review

by "Nathaniel R. Atcheson" (nate AT pyramid DOT net)
May 31st, 1999
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
A capsule review by Nathaniel R. Atcheson

Director: Josef Rusnak
Cast: Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dennis Haysbert, Steve Schub
Screenplay: Josef Rusnak, Ravel Centeno-Rodriguez
Producers: Roland Emmerich, Ute Emmerich, Marco Weber
Runtime:
US Distribution: Columbia
Rated R: Violence, language

Copyright 1999 Nathaniel R. Atcheson

The Thirteenth Floor is a bland, obligatory exercise in genre film-making. If I hadn't recently watched The Matrix and Open Your Eyes -- both of which are similar but far superior -- I might have been a little nicer to this picture. Craig Bierko makes an adequate hero as Douglas Hall, the rich co-creator of a perfect human world simulation who is suddenly blamed for the murder of his boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Everything that was subtle and smart about the previously mentioned films is battered over our heads in this one, and characters stare at each other for maddeningly-long periods of time and refuse to communicate on any realistic level. The acting is okay, but the film suffers from every logical flaw one could think of, and features a script (co-penned by director Josef Rusnak) loaded with cliches and stock characters. There are individual scenes and ideas that work -- I like the thought of a sentient computer program -- but none of the film's strengths are recognized to any meaningful degree. Producer Roland Emmerich, based on this and his previous directorial efforts, seems hell-bent on bringing us the ultimate standard in mediocre science-fiction.

Psychosis Rating: 4/10

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