(1999) "Where are you?" asks Natasha. "You could call it the end of the world," Douglas replies.

Detectives Larry McBain (Dennis Haysbert) and Zev Bernstein of LAPD contact Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko) to identify the corpse of Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl), slashed to death in an alley. Hannon ("Fuller was onto a whole new frontier") had been Douglas's boss in a computer-software company (producing real-world simulations) and friend for the past six years.

Back in the company offices, Douglas finds Jane Fuller (Grethchen Mol), who says she's recently arrived from Paris and Hannon's daughter. Unaware of Hannon's having any family, "You look very familiar," he tells her, though she says they've never met before.

On the 13th floor Douglas visits with programmer Jason Whitney (Vincent D'Onofrio), grieving over the loss of "the Einstein of our generation." Fuller had created a simulated world of Los Angeles in 1937 (both the city and the programming still under construction), partly out of nostalgia for his childhood home, with electronic simulated characters into which he had experimented living among on his own.

The imagined scenes of a reconstructed LA, in this sci-fi thriller, directed by Josef Rusnak (co-screenwriter with Ravel Centeno-Rodriguez) and based on Daniel Galouye's novel Simulacron 3, are vividly captivating; unfortunately, most of the movie (covering 87 years) and its plot, which degenerates into a horror/murder show, are much less so.

Uncertain of being the murderer or framed, Douglas has Whitney help mind-jack him as John Ferguson, bank teller, into the system for two hours in a search for clues as to who killed Fuller. At the Wilshire Grand Hotel he finds Bridget Manilla (Shiri Appleby), a dancer, and Jerry Ashton (D'Onofrio), the barkeep, from whom he learns that Fuller had been having sex with young women.

Back in the present, Tom Jones, another bartender, demands a seven-figure payment to keep quiet about having seen Douglas leave the bar with Fuller just before the old man was stabbed. The motive behind the murder, as Det McBain sees it, was that Fuller wanted to shutdown operations, so Hall sliced him up; but Jane comes up with an alibi for Douglas.

On his own Douglas re-enters the system - unaware of an alert indicating "Time not engaged" - to find Fuller's simulation, a bookseller named Grierson, who says he doesn't recognize Hall or know anything about Hannon Fuller (though he admits to having blackouts and flashes of fantasies); together they return to the Wilshire where Grierson is greeted as Mr Fuller, a well-regarded member and "honey bear." Recalling another earlier incident, the old man tells Douglas of his having handed a letter to Ashton for Douglas Hall.

Chasing after and catching Ashton, Douglas demands: "I need to know what's in that letter." It instructed attempting to drive to Tucson - "Don't stop for anything" - which brought Ashton to the realization: "It was all a sham." A fight ensues during which Ashton shoots Douglas: "Is this real?"

Fuller didn't have a daughter, Det McBain tells Douglas; besides, Jane has disappeared. In a grocery store Douglas finds Natasha Molinaro (Mol), who has a funny feeling they've met before. "How can you love me?" Douglas asks Jane, who explains her having fallen in love by watching him in the simulations: "I'm not even real."

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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