The movie stars Craig Bierko (The Lengthy Kiss Goodnight) as Douglas Corridor, a pc scientist who discovers that his colleague, Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl), has created a totally immersive simulation of 1937 Los Angeles. When Fuller is discovered murdered, Corridor turns into the prime suspect and begins investigating Fuller’s final days. Ultimately, he realizes that the simulated world is far more refined than he thought.
As Corridor navigates each the digital 1937 setting and the 1999 world, he encounters characters whose lives and identities are intertwined throughout each realities. Betrayals and hidden motives slowly unravel, forcing Corridor to confront the chance that his personal world could also be a simulation.
The forged is strong, with Gretchen Mol and Dennis Haysbert in supporting roles. Arguably, Bierko isn’t an performing powerhouse, however inhabiting completely different characters offers him room to play. His extra well-known comedy stylings (he famously handed on the function of Chandler in Buddies, permitting finest pal Matthew Perry to land the half) work in his favor as he drops into his baffled 1937 avatar, whereas his mugging is well-suited to a different avatar’s extra diabolical tendencies.
It helps that Bierko is paired with persistently improbable character actor Vincent D’Onofrio, who can be enjoying a number of roles. In 1999, he’s an affable, floppy-haired techie. In 1937, he’s steely-eyed, harmful, and much too observant of his environment to stay tethered to a digital world. Bierko’s Corridor has a number of suspects whereas investigating his mentor’s homicide, and at key factors within the story, it’s straightforward to develop into satisfied that D’Onofrio might be all of them. He’s simply that good at enjoying a calculating, suspicious character.
Loosely based mostly on Daniel F. Galouye’s 1964 novel, Simulacron-3, The Thirteenth Flooring deftly remakes Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 miniseries World on a Wire. With its comparable themes of simulation and existential uncertainty however with out The Matrix’s groundbreaking particular results (the closest you’ll get to that right here is a few neon inexperienced lasers and a dry ice machine within the digital actuality machine room), The Thirteenth Flooring embraces a delicate, noir-driven central thriller that opts to discover private guilt and romantic anguish as a substitute.
Clearly, that wasn’t an strategy that bought butts in seats again in 1999, however when you love The Matrix and Darkish Metropolis and pine for the times of unique sci-fi, it could be time to present The Thirteenth Flooring a glance.
