4K UHD Review – Virtuosity

With the development of the internet and virtual reality in the early 1990s, Hollywood wasn't about to let such futuristic fun simply walk on by. Instead, producers dabbled in tech-thrillers, trying to make sense of difficult concepts while playing to the mass audience. One of the most successful of these odd pictures was 1992's "The Lawnmower Man," as co-writer/director Brett Leonard endeavored to transform a bizarre Stephen King short story into a VR nightmare, generating unusual visual effects to create a film that strived to be scary and sensual. The approached clicked at the box office, giving Leonard a career to manage, making himself a valuable player in uncharted cinematic territory. 1995's "Virtuosity" provides Leonard with a bigger budget to examine the ways of digital horrors, but instead of creating another creeper, he goes the action route, working with a promising manhunt tale from writer Eric Bernt that explores the wrath of an A.I. entity in the real world. The feature has the potential to be real fun, and the work has a few moments of B-movie clarity, but Leonard isn't the proper fit for a bruising thrill ride. His vision tends to turn "Virtuosity" into a cartoon, which might connect for certain viewers, but promise of something more suspenseful and demented isn't met in this mediocre offering. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com