The Thirteenth Floor

Time waits for no film, and if this sci-fi thriller hadn't trailed behind THE MATRIX, eXISTENz and DARK CITY, all of which paddle around the same dark pool of worries about the nature of reality, it might seem less predictable and, well, more thrilling. Six years of feverish work by Intergraph Computer Systems programmers has produced a realer-than-real virtual reality game that plunges the user into an alternate reality — 1930s Los Angeles — indistinguishable from the real McCoy. But somewhere in the game lies a secret that VR visionary Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl) has hidden for his protégé Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko), afraid that he may not be...