Critic Reviews

Virtuosity is a sleek, brutal techno-thriller that generates nonstop action, but for at least some of us the fun is spoiled by its numbing body count and murky story line.

What redeems Virtuosity a little is that even at the end, even in the midst of the action cliches, it still finds surprises in the paradox of a villain that is also a program.

Unfortunately, Virtuosity ignores character development in favor of slick set design and mindless action sequences. Consequently, it plays like an outdated video game.

Virtuosity never lacks for energy, its pacing is appropriately breakneck, its bangs are as big as Nagasaki - but finally it can't escape its limitations as a genre picture. [5 Aug 1995, p.C11]

If all of Virtuosity were as tightly controlled as that, it would exert a greater fascination than it finally does.

Nevertheless, given Washington's presence and the promise of a virtual reality action story, Virtuosity has some appeal -- provided, of course, the viewers aren't selective.

Watching movies like this strain to fit new technologies like VR into old genres and plot conventions, you can't help wondering whether the real artificial intelligence experiment these days isn't Hollywood itself. Plug the psychological profiles of 200 hit movies into its hive-mind, and out comes one plastic-bodied, loop-brained clone after another.

It's a by-the-numbers action affair, and one that is considerably more mean-spirited and humorless than the norm. [4 Aug 1995, p.29]

Quality premise, poor execution.

Even with its cyberspace connection, the story comes across as flat and tired, merely a pretext for the filmmakers' occasionally dazzling but ultimately numbing special effects. The world of Virtuosity may be spanking new, but the ideas are yesterday's news.