The Thirteenth Floor | |
---|---|
Theatrical release poster
|
|
Directed by | Josef Rusnak |
Produced by |
Roland Emmerich Ute Emmerich Marco Weber |
Screenplay by | Josef Rusnak Ravel Centeno-Rodriguez |
Based on |
Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye |
Starring | |
Music by | Harald Kloser |
Cinematography | Wedigo von Schultzendorff |
Edited by | Henry Richardson |
Production
company |
|
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date
|
April 16, 1999 May 28, 1999 (United States) November 25, 1999 (Germany) |
(Denmark)
Running time
|
100 minutes |
Country | United States Germany |
Language | English |
Budget | $16 million |
Box office | $18,564,088 |
The Thirteenth Floor is a 1999 science fiction crime thriller film directed by Josef Rusnak and loosely based upon Simulacron-3 (1964), a novel by Daniel F. Galouye. The film stars Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Dennis Haysbert. In 2000, The Thirteenth Floor was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, but lost to The Matrix.
In late 1990s Los Angeles, Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl) owns a multibillion-dollar computer enterprise and is the inventor of a newly completed virtual reality (VR) simulation of 1937 Los Angeles, filled with simulated humans unaware they are computer programs. When Fuller is murdered just as he begins premature testing of the VR system, his friend and protégé, Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko), who is also the heir to the company, becomes the primary suspect. The evidence against him is so strong that Hall begins to doubt his own innocence.
Between interrogations by LAPD Detective Larry McBain (Dennis Haysbert), Hall meets Jane Fuller (Gretchen Mol), the estranged daughter of Hannon Fuller, who is busy with the shutdown of the new VR system. Hall then romances her. When a local bartender is murdered after he claims to have witnessed a meeting between Hall and Fuller on the night Fuller was murdered, Hall is arrested. He is released when Jane gives him an alibi.