Please don't spend money on this.

one of my absolute favorites!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I just watched this film today for the first time, nearly 20 years after it was made. It is a very confusing story line, but cool characters and excellent background music. It reminded me of a whole chain of other excellent films that could have been inspired by this one even though it wasn't clear exactly what was going on all of the time. My view is that it was the first inspiration for a reality world in the matrix using that description, but had a groundhog day feel to it and also a dark city feel to it, as we tried to solve the mystery of the breach of the matrix. In my view the story also has a hint of the looper in that the main character closes his own loop. The young girl getting caught in the matrix explains how he broke the breach the first time, as she entered from the street and so it showed that it was possible for the prison to be breached. So many interpretations of the story can be made, but my interpretation is that he may have put his wife there himself knowing that the mind essence doesn't die in the prison, but persists and changes form as they show the goons don't die when they are killed. Maybe he intended to live forever in the matrix with his beloved as it was better than the existing world? From the outside the breach is fixed but maybe he has the final revenge? Because it is so confusing it is almost impossible to discuss this film without some kind of interpretation spoiler but would be curious to know if anyone else enjoyed this film as I did!

Yeah yeah, I know, it isn't supposed to be in my collection but like many reviewers I bought it for Julie Benz. I have seen her perform in quite a bit of movies and of course in Dexter. Over here in the genre she's well sought after due Dexter and due her appearance at European conventions were I have met her. Why it shouldn't be in my collection is that it isn't a horror but a SF flick. But as a collector I have seen a lot of crap, from top class to Z-movies. It's a phenomena that is regular in horror to have some real turkeys. I would say that I would classify it under a straight-to-video B-flick. The effects used are typical 80's stuff like flashing lights and flashbulbs tearing down persons. They surely have watched Terminator and Blade Runner to come up with something but sometimes the acting is really wooden. The story itself is hard to follow but for many it's the scene with the 21 year old Julie that makes the film worth watching. She's seen in frontal nudity here a thing she never did again, except for Dexter and Eating Las Vegas, a parody on Leaving Las Vegas, but she shows the most in this flick. If you are into B-movies than you surely can watch this. A few years later The Matrix showed how it should be done.

A few years ago I had an opportunity to talk to Claire Stansfield about this film. I said that I was confused about the plot and hoped she could explain it to me. She said that she was also confused, and hoped that someone would explain it to her as well. We both agreed that the film's plot made absolutely no sense and left it at that.Perhaps this was someone's attempt to fill in the prison back story of Demolition Man (remember the VR deep freeze in that one?). The Sci-Fi premise of a VR prison has plenty of merit (c.f. The Matrix), but this movie lacked any semblance of credibility or even of continuity.In any case, this movie is one to miss unless you are a die-hard fan of one of the actors involved. Even so, prepare to be disappointed. I was.

I don't see enough of this genre to properly make any comparisons, but this film certainly had very little analytical thought behind the script. It takes place in some future when people are all driving black 97 Ford minivans, but penal reform has reached the point at which prisoners are banished to a virtual reality, furnished with, among other things, abandoned Pintos and Vegas, as well as the other prisoners in a similar plight. The banishment, of course, is accompanied by sustained, blinding flashes of intense white light. The general story line is told through closeups of computer screens the flash up-dating messages like "Transformation Complete" and "Program Compromised". The film abounds with non-sequiturs, which I suppose is de-rigeur in a world where the final outcome cannot possibly have any link to the premise. Needless to say, it has its standard complement of beautiful babes, and Claire Stansfield is kinda cool.I get 25 cable movie channels, and this was the best thing on at not-quite-bedtime, so I guess it wasn't that bad.