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The 1990s were a golden era for action movies, with Hollywood churning out high-octane blockbusters at an unprecedented rate. Big-budget spectacles dominated the movie theaters, and the rise of CGI, as rudimentary as it was, opened new frontiers for sci-fi and cyber-thriller genres. Yet, in the flood of explosions, car chases, and high-stakes heroics, some movies — despite featuring A-list stars — failed to leave a lasting mark.

Nestled between genre-defining hits such as 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day and 1999’s The Matrix, some cinematic gems simply flew under the radar. One such hidden gem is Virtuosity, a cyberpunk thriller starring none other than Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. This 1995 movie has been re-released in 4K UHD by Vinegar Syndrome, offering a fresh look at this often-overlooked release. The movie, though released in the ’90s, bears heavy influences from the previous decade and mixes up some of the best tropes sci-fi action films have to offer.

Denzel Washington portrays Parker Barnes, a former policeman imprisoned for killing a terrorist who killed Barnes’ wife and child. However, Parker also shot two reporters by accident and ended up being sentenced to 17 years to life. During his imprisonment, Barnes and another inmate were used to train different iterations of AI in virtual reality. At the beginning of the movie, they were tracking down a serial killer named SID (short for Sadistic, Intelligent, Dangerous) in VR, which ended with a disaster.

SID is an amalgamation of some of the most violent serial killers throughout history, and during their time in VR, he manages to wound Parker and kill another inmate within the simulation. Once the simulation ends, the director overseeing the project orders SID’s termination. However, SID manages to convince his programmer to transfer him into a synthetically grown android body, thus bringing SID into the real world.

Given that he’s an amalgamation of some of history’s greatest killers, SID resorts to doing what he does best. Once the word gets out that SID is now plaguing and causing chaos in the real world, those in charge offer Barnes a pardon if he manages to catch SID and bring him back to virtual reality. The rest is the usual cinematic play of cat and mouse in which a disgruntled police officer chases a criminal — whose personality profile also contains a profile of a man who killed Parker’s wife and child.

The movie ends like most sci-fi action movies do; there’s a climactic battle in which the bad guy uses the last bit of his strength to try and kill the good guy, but the good guy ends up winning anyway. Story-wise, the movie really isn’t anything special. As previously mentioned, it’s a blend of typical action movie tropes mixed in a cautionary tale about an unethical development of technology and AI, especially since it accurately predicted the present fears stoked by AI and VR technologies.

But what makes Virtuosity great is its cast. Denzel Washington portrays Barnes as a troubled and conflicted hero haunted by a tragic past. Washington does well with his portrayal, as he gives Barnes a commanding presence that provides a grounded counterpoint to Virtuosity’s more outlandish elements — of which there are plenty. He’s everything you can expect from a ’90s sci-fi action movie protagonist: a no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point action hero capable of delivering his now-iconic one-liners.

Russell Crowe‘s SID 6.7 is an excellent villain. Crowe provided a completely unhinged and joyous performance of an antagonist who escaped the confines of virtual reality and now spreads chaos throughout the real world. Not only that, but he’s actually having fun with murder and mayhem. He’s thrilled with his physical existence and is almost always smiling, even in the film’s darkest moments. Truly exceptional.

Apart from Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, the rest of the cast is populated by some of the best character actors in the industry at the time. William Fichtner, best known for Contact, Armageddon, and Black Hawk Down, makes every movie and video game he’s in better. William Forsythe is yet another great actor; not only is he great in everything he ever appeared in but he could actually make watching paint dry look and sound interesting.

Despite the great performances of its cast and a generally intriguing premise, Virtuosity suffered from a weak and formulaic script and an inconsistent tone and direction. The movie managed to recuperate its production budget, but it received mixed to negative reviews from both the critics and the audiences, resulting in it falling into oblivion. But now, thanks to Vinegar Syndrome, we have the opportunity to re-examine the movie in 4K UHD resolution, complemented with a ton of new and interesting content, such as director commentary, various interviews, and featurettes.

Still, none of that will change the fact that, while being a hidden gem of ’90s cinema, Virtuosity falls short of being a cinematic masterpiece. It is, however, one of the subgenre’s most creative and thrill-packed releases, and it is almost certainly going to provide a lot of fun to those who like sci-fi action films.

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