In the far-off year of 2005, VR rules. Will Singleton (Smith) is a man obsessed with VR. He even has a VR job and a VR girlfriend. His job involves working the bugs out of a “Virtual Reality Prison”, where prisoners are forced to compete in VR games against “wealthy sportsmen”. The mastermind of the VR prison system is one R.D. Crowley (Davi). Because he believes one of the VR prisoners might be innocent, Crowley throws Singleton into the game with the other sportsmen. These games involve going into various different historical periods and trying to survive. There’s even a madman on the loose, Baracus (Washburn). Will Will Singleton make it back to reality…alive? In the 90’s, VR was huge. It was surely slated to be the next big thing. Many movies have utilized the VR concept, such as Expect No Mercy (1995), Evolver (1995), The Protector (1999), and even more mainstream fare such as Johnny Mnemonic (1995) and Virtuosity (1995), and the TV show VR Troopers, among many other examples. Here, Ingvordsen, the man behind Comrades In Arms (1992) and The Outfit (1993), assembles a sort of cross between an “unstuck in time” kind of adventure and a Most Dangerous Game (1932) knockoff. With silly morphing effects and characters running around with straps, suction cups and VR helmets, of course. In fact, the name of one of the makers of said helmets, “Headgear”, whose name is prominently displayed on the outside of the helmet, doesn’t really make someone look tough. It makes you think of complicated braces.

The movie starts off with a bang, with Matthias Hues and other loinclothed fighters squaring off in what has to be one of the most ridiculous battles yet filmed. It’s rare to see something THIS silly THIS fast, and surely that makes this movie worth every penny. Before you can say “Start conscious Shareware”, the action continues in Revolutionary War times, the Prohibition era (which seems very much like Invordsen’s other movie, The Outfit), WWII, Vietnam, and other time periods. Frankly, it all gets a bit disjointed and jumbled, as you don’t know what time period, or what part of reality, the action is taking place in. But the team of Weiner, Washburn (who REALLY looks like Mike Huckabee) and Ingvordsen did it all on a low budget, and we commend them for that.

As far as those actors are concerned, Ingvordsen and Josh Mosby look almost exactly alike, which is the same problem we had with The Outfit, in which they both co-starred. Plus Ingvordsen’s accent is just incomprehensible, seemingly going from Scottish to German to no accent in the course of one sentence. Washburn portrays Baracus (not to be confused with Brakus), but he must be the brother Mr. T rarely talks about.

Rather than just sit at your computer and have a nice relaxing game of Snood, Sim City or Myst, we now have high-stakes VR. But it all has fun