Nirvana

Nirvana (1997) is an Italian-French cyberpunk thriller directed by Gabriele Salvatores — watch it online on iFILM. Christopher Lambert plays Jimi, a game designer at the Okosama Starr corporation, whose virtual-reality product is days away from a global Christmas launch.

A virus has slipped into the code and handed consciousness to Solo, the game's protagonist. Solo is trapped in an endless respawn loop and begs Jimi to delete him. Meanwhile, Jimi's girlfriend Lisa has vanished into the sprawling, neon-rotten city that exists outside the game. With seventy-two hours left before the release ships to millions of players, Jimi pushes into the simulation himself — hunting for a way to pull the plug and, somewhere along the way, find Lisa.

Salvatores made this right after his Oscar-winning Mediterranean and pivoted hard: Nirvana is bleak, corporate, and shot with a rawness that most European sci-fi of the mid-nineties never managed. If you like your technology stories without easy answers, this one holds up. Stream Nirvana (1997) online on iFILM.