Russell Crowe terrorized Denzel Washington as a disjointed AI in this underrated sci-fi thriller

The lawn mower man is a cult classic these days, but it didn’t take long after its release in 1992 for its vision of the future to already become dated or unrealistic – or perhaps its vision of virtual reality and digitized consciousness was just ahead of its time? This argument might actually be more appropriate for one of Man Lawn Mower director Brett LeonardOther films from: the science fiction drama Virtuosity from 1995. At the very least, the film accurately predicted that it was exciting to see Russell Crowe And Denzel Washington confront each other, 12 years before starting again (with significantly greater critical success) in Ridley ScottIt is American gangster.

Of course, it’s not too difficult to achieve greater critical acclaim than Virtuositywhich has 31% on Rotten Tomatoes and was an absolute bomb at the box office, but that seems harsh (especially in a world where everyone seems to be having fun with The lawn mower man NOW). Really, how bad could a movie be if it starred a young Denzel Washington as a renegade cop and a young Russell Crowe as an AI trained on all of the worst serial killers in history? If we all take off our Serious Cinemate hats for a second, surely we can agree that something this wild must be at least a little fun.

Movies like ‘Virtuosity’ tried to warn us about AI

Load your brain into a computer and become a cybergod like in Man Lawn Mower this still seems unlikely, even with modern technological advances. However, there is a 100% guarantee that someone develops a great language model or evil-trained AI chatbot like Crowe’s. SID 6.7 In Virtuosity (and there is also a 100% guarantee that someone intends to make money from this by boiling the Great Lakes). Many science fiction concerns about AI are unrealistic, but the basic premise of the film might as well be the way things work now – or at least how the technicians want it to work.

At the start of the film, in the near future, 1999, the character Washington (Parker Barnes) is in prison for executing a terrorist who killed his family, while this terrorist’s personality profile is one of several profiles uploaded to the SID 6.7 AI. Researchers intend to use SID to train police officers in virtual reality, but when the intensity of the experience kills a tester, the organization attempts to shut down SID. Before this can happen, however, the SID is downloaded into a synthetic body and he (he?) goes on a rampage. Of course, the only one who can stop him is Denzel Washington, since he has the experience of facing one of the murderous personalities.

It’s weird to see a setup for a ’90s sci-fi action movie like that and think it’s more relevant than ever, but… it kind of is. Even if everyone is right and the movie is objectively bad, it seems well poised for a rebirth or reevaluation. This premise could be an HBO drama like Western worldor an expensive/trashy Prime Video procedure. It would even be fun to see modern Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe do a remake.

Release date

August 4, 1995

Runtime

106 minutes

Director

Brett Leonard

Writers

Eric Bernt