hat do we look for?” Lieutenant Parker Barnes (Denzel Washington) and his partner John Donovan (Costas Mandylor) are on the hunt for a wanted man – someone sadistic, intelligent, and dangerous. But their search takes place inside an incredibly advanced simulation – one in which their minds are manipulated by enormous machines that plug them into a vast virtual-reality world. It’s supposed to be a safe place to train law enforcement officials, but as the programmers work out the kinks, Police Chief Billy Cochran (William Forsythe) and commissioner Elizabeth Deane (Louise Fletcher) green-light the use of Los Angeles inmates as guinea pigs. After all, should any of them die while in the system, it’s not a significant loss.

“What about the failsafes?” Sure enough, various test subjects do perish, though former cop and current isolation-wing inmate Barnes is well-versed in these sorts of AI worlds. And he’s starting to catch on to the primary villain in Zone 7’s Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Center mega-computer, SID 6.7 (Russell Crowe), who is capable of altering the neural sensitivity calibrations to the point that he can commit murders from inside the simulation tests. But SID wants to get out of the boundaries of the “game,” convincing his designer (Stephen Spinella) to place his software module into an incubatory reaction field that will generate an android body (a nanotech synthetic organism) with regenerative powers. “People don’t usually die in games.”

Once SID is out in the real world, “Virtuosity” begins to take the shape of “Demolition Man” crossed with “Escape from New York” and “The Terminator” (with a hint of “Total Recall,” “Die Hard,” “Speed,” and “Robocop”), as Parker is given an opportunity for freedom by tracking down the escaped criminal. Although this is an original screenplay (by Eric Bernt), it unquestionably lifts plot points from countless prior pictures. Although needless, to make the adventure slightly more complicated, the lieutenant is given a sidekick in the form of criminal psychologist Madison Carter (Kelly Lynch), who threatens her way into the mission by suggesting that she might leak the public relations nightmare to the press. Essentially, she’s included to enable conversations between the two so that the characters can directly convey their sleuthing – no need for audiences to pick up on obvious concepts for themselves.

Also pointless are flashbacks that tie SID to Barnes, though it makes the dueling more personal. And, in a way, there’s a meaninglessness to the killer’s bullet-proof invincibility, since he could have merely been depicted as super-smart. Instead, with such excessively futuristic elements, “Virtuosity” relies too heavily on sci-fi components rather than a crafty face-off between cops and crooks. It also makes the various battles sillier and less involving; pitting a heavily-armed human against an indomitable juggernaut means that no one is particularly sympathetic.

Washington gives it his all, however, remaining convincing as a tormented yet heroic policeman, while Crowe hams it up, enjoying the role but ultimately appearing just plain annoying. In the end, it becomes evident that the story is missing the creativity required to set it apart from other generic actioners, relying on the general blandness of an unhinged psychopath taking hostages and shooting people indiscriminately, along with a chase or two and numerous shootouts (commenting on viewers’ love of violence as it depicts more violence). It also doesn’t help that the soundtrack is intermittently unfitting, and that its frequent use of primitive computer graphics are something of a highlight. Plus, the finale is utterly nonsensical, going off on a tangent that has nothing to do with anything that came before it. Curiously, as unremarkable as it all is, a few confrontations take place in unusual arenas, while a couple of ideas lend themselves to “The Matrix” – which would go so much farther and do so much better.

– Mike Massie