Film Friday: The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

The Thirteenth Floor is a film I should like more than I do. It’s thoughtful and is premised on a truly inspired science fiction idea. And that should easily vault it above most of the garbage that is out there. But The Thirteenth Floor isn’t all that great, and while I recommend seeing it, my recommendation is lukewarm.

** spoiler alert **

On the surface, The Thirteenth Floor is about the murder of Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl), the owner of a billion-dollar computer company which has created a virtual reality simulation of 1937 Los Angeles. But in reality, this is a science fiction story of a world within a world within a world. The story follows Fuller’s protégé, Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko), who is the prime suspect in Fuller’s death, as he investigates the murder in both the world of 1990’s Los Angeles and the virtual reality world of 1937 Los Angeles. In the process, he runs across the same people in each world and he learns a shocking secret.

If you just look at the concept of this film, this film should be fantastic. Not only does it promise the always fascinating idea of multiple realities overlapping, but it involves intrigue which spans each world in the form of a killer on the loose. This should be a nearly can’t-miss prospect. But it does miss.

The first reason this film misses is the acting. I like Armin Mueller- Stahl and Vincent D’Onofrio, and they are fine as always. But after that, things get dicey. Gretchen Mol plays Fuller’s daughter and Bierko’s sort-of love-interest, but there’s no point where you get the sense she cares about anything. Even when she’s confronted by the killer, she just stands there and hopes the scene works out. All-State Insurance Rep. Dennis Haysbert plays the detective who is investigating the murder. He doesn’t care either. He doesn’t even seem to care when he learns about the multiple worlds and that people are traveling back and forth. The worst offender, however, is Bierko who plays the protégé. He also never cares about anything, which is problematic when he needs to project wonder and terror at his discoveries. And at times, it almost seems like he thinks he’s in a parody (fyi, he was the lead in Scary Movie 4 and his acting there is indistinguishable from here).

The sets are bad too (except the fantastic effect of 1937 Los Angeles), and that’s problematic. The payoff of the film is that you’re supposed to wonder if we might not be inside a machine right now and not know it. But the world the film presents as real never feels like a real world. It feels like a movie with people who don’t change clothes, don’t have homes or friends, and spend their lives in smoky dramatic shadows. There are no personal effects anywhere and no sets that look like anywhere we work or live. This makes it hard to see ourselves in this world.

The dialog is bad too because it lacks grace, subtlety and cleverness. The film starts with Descartes’ quote “I think, therefore I am.” This is a bad omen because this quote is THE generic quote about the nature of existence. It’s so generic it’s almost cartoon-level. And this foreshadows the level of what is to come as throughout the film you get quotes like: “what is real?” and “maybe we’ve met before in another life?” This is the sledgehammer approach to dialog. This is like lovers saying, “I love you” or killers saying, “I am going to kill you.” Also, there is no wit anywhere in this film. And the characters never discuss the philosophy of what is going on -- a glaring omission for a film premised on a philosophical point. Essentially, the dialog in this film is blunt plot and nothing more.

There are also deeper problems. The murder which is meant to keep you interested until the reveal is little more than a pretext. There is no motive for the audience to latch onto until the end and the investigation is little more than a collection of scenes that don’t logically relate to anything. For example, Bierko runs around meeting people but we have no idea where he got their names or why these people matter. The cops don’t seem to follow up on leads. There’s also no sense of urgency. You’re never told the cops are closing in or that the killer is planning to strike again. It seems that Bierko has as long as he needs to solve this.

The machine they are using makes no sense either. They have created an independent simulation of another time and place for no apparent reason. In fact, when the detective asks why they’ve done this, Bierko tells him that is a company secret and he can’t share that information. While that’s a valid answer at that moment, the problem is it leaves the audience with a machine that does nothing except drive the plot. Even when the characters in the simulation discover the truth and demand to know why they created the simulated world, Bierko still has no answer.

The reveal is problematic as well. For one thing, the idea that there’s another world comes from out of the blue, and the idea that characters can somehow move up a level to the real world seems like deus ex machina as it is never explained and seems like a cheat to resolve the plot. Also, the way the movie ends makes everything we’ve seen irrelevant. But worst of all, the ending ties in poorly with the rest. Yes, it explains the murders, but it’s not something anyone could have guessed and really is better at explaining “how” the murders happened than “why” they happened. Indeed, there is a disconnect here because there is nothing happening in the real world which would force the murderer to come commit the murders. That makes the ending feel entirely random.

Finally, where this movie really fails is its utter lack of consideration of the psychological aspects. For a film like this to work, i.e. a film based on the confusion of multiple realities, there must be a sense that the realities really are blurring and that the character we are meant to follow is losing their grip on reality -- you can’t just occasionally have a supporting character ask, “what is real.” None of that happens here. Only the Vincent D’Onofrio character ever seems to grasp the sense of confusion at finding out his world is not real. Bierko and the others remain perfectly clear throughout and it never takes them more than a moment to realize when someone is being inhabited by someone from another reality. Because of this, it’s impossible to wonder, as the film hopes we do at that end, if our world might not be fake as well.

I also wonder if another problem with this film isn’t the concept itself? Perhaps the idea of a simulated world within a world has been done so often that audiences are just too wise to the clues and have seen it all before?

Despite these problems, the film is worth seeing. It presents an interesting take on the idea of a world within a world and it has some clever moments. For example, how people come to realize they are in a simulation is well thought out. And the mystery is enough to keep you wondering, though it’s ultimately disappointing.

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Film Friday: Impostor (2002)

Impostor is a little-known movie staring Gary Sinise, Vincent D’Onofrio and Madeleine Stowe. It’s an enjoyable film for the most part, with excellent acting, good sets, and an engaging enough story. But it has a serious flaw that bothers me to no end, a flaw that is common to much science fiction: failure to think practically.

** spoiler alert **

Based on the Phillip K. Dick short story of the same name, Impostor is the story of scientist Spencer Olham as he struggles to prove he’s human. The story is set in the near future at a time when the Earth is at war with an evil alien race. Oldham (Sinise) is developing a super weapon. The story begins as Oldham recounts his weekend get away with his wife to his best friend and fellow scientist Nelson (Tony Shalhoub). His wife Maya (Stowe) runs the local military hospital.

As Oldham and Nelson go about their business, which includes preparing for a formal visit from the Prime Minster, a security team shows up, led by Major Hathaway (Vincent D’Onofrio). Hathaway claims his security forces intercepted an alien transmission, which revealed that Sinise is a replicant, i.e. he’s an organic machine that has been grown to think, act, look and feel like Oldham. Moreover, these machines don't even know they're machines, they actually think they're the people they replaced. And deep inside each replicant is a nuclear bomb waiting to go off when the replicant comes into contact with their target -- though the bombs can't be detected until they are ready to explode. Essentially, these replicants are unsuspecting, nuclear suicide bombers.

Hathaway’s job is to catch these replicants before they activate and explode. Thus, he plans to cut Sinise open to remove the bomb before it can explode. But Sinise isn’t down with that plan, so he escapes. The rest of the movie involves Sinise running from Hathaway, trying to enlist the aid of his wife, and trying to get a full body medical scan done of his body so he can prove he's human. Along the way, he befriends Mekhi Phifer, who lives outside of the dome in the ghetto and who wants to steal medicine to help the people the government forgot.

I won’t tell you the ending because I think you might enjoy the movie and some of the twists and turns near the end. Sinise is a great actor who gives his all. D’Onofrio isn’t far behind. The effects are good, and interestingly, many of the ideas in this story also appear in Minority Report, another Phillip Dick story made into a movie in 2002.

So what’s the problem? The problem arises when you start thinking about how the aliens are using the replicants. Ostensibly, the aliens are using the replicants because they have no other way to reach targets on Earth because the Earthers built domes around their cities as soon as the war began. By replacing people with these suicide-bombing replicants, however, the aliens can destroy targets on Earth. And that’s the film’s hook.

But it’s also kind of stupid. These aliens have found a way to replace anyone and smuggle nuclear bombs anywhere on Earth. So they come up with an elaborate plan to replace Sinise, let him wander around for a couple days until he meets the Prime Minister and then blow up? Hello! These are nuclear bombs! Are these aliens stupid? Why not just replace a couple hundred janitors. Tell them to report for work. The moment they all clock in at 9:00 am, POOF. . . no more cities.

This is a problem that is particularly common to science fiction. Too many times, the writers focus on their one really cool idea and they never really think about the world that surrounds it or how rational people would use their idea. It’s Rube Goldbergian. It’s like the idea that the government does secret scientific testing at midnight on animals belonging to unsuspecting farmers in Montana. . . when they could just as easily buy a dozen cattle and do the same test in the comfort of a private lab. It’s like the idea that brilliant James Bond villains need to invent elaborate ways to kill Jimmy B. . . when they could just shoot him. Yes, it creates a plot point, but not a valid one.

I’m not saying the idea of nuclear replicants isn’t a good one. I think it is. It just didn’t make a lot of sense how the aliens used it.

Think rationally people, you’ll make better movies.

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