The Thirteenth Floor

(Columbia Tristar)

Craig Bierko brings a warm smile to his David Duchovny-esque deadpan as Douglas Hall, who with fellow hacker Whitney (a freaky Vincent D'Onofrio) and mentor Hannon Fuller (a creepily avuncular Armin Mueller-Stahl) is developing a computer game that's a virtual re-creation of 1937 Los Angeles. Fuller is found murdered, however, and Hall is the prime suspect, though he can't remember a damn thing. To learn the truth he logs into the game, and though the near-monochromatic, computer-generated period sets are rich and sinister, the surprise twists he encounters are the expected ones.