The Thirteenth Floor (1999) starring Armin-Mueller Stahl is a science fiction crime thriller — what Victor Eaves might call a ‘tech noir’ — directed by Josef Rusnak.  It’s part based on the novel Simulacron-3 (1964) by Daniel F. Galouye — part based because Simulacron-3 because Simulacron-3  is an early effort at describing virtual reality, something that had become vastly sophisticated by 1999 — that was the year of The Matrix after all.  Armin Mueller-Stahl plays the inventor of the Virtual Reality system as well as character within it, alternating between a confidant patriarchal charm and a more confused and bumbling artisanal type.  He is much better placed here than he would have been in The Matrix.