Rating
Synopsis
Imagine a world where you can do anything you want without any repercussions as long as Bruce Willis says it’s ok. That’s Vice, a company that uses synthetic people to allow real people perform their seedy desires without breaking the law. Surely nothing can go wrong here.
MPAA Rating
Rated R for violence, sexy time and cussing
Plot
Vice is a futuristic company providing a safe environment for scum bags to act out their dirty fantasies on artificial people without any repercussions from the law or society. Run by Julian Michaels (Willis), they provide beautiful, realistic androids for the general public to rape, beat up and kill on a nightly basis. So, all in all, a stand up, respectable company.
Roy (Thomas Jane) is a grizzly, hardened detective hell bent on shutting Vice down despite his bosses instructions to leave it alone. Sporting a hair style straight out of the seventies and a mean Tom Waits impersonation, Roy’s persistence hasn’t gone unnoticed by Michaels and this sets up the good guy – bad guy vibe.
Meanwhile, Kelly (Ambyr Childers), an artificial with a hairdo stolen from a Sia music video, is beginning to have flashbacks of previous murders/rapes/beatings she’s been on the losing end of despite having her memories wiped after each event. Traumatized, she breaks free from Vice and enters the city – which isn’t much better. She must now find safety while dodging Vice’s private goons – who are armed with state of the art weapons but lucky for her they haven’t been trained on how to shoot them.
Will Roy bring down the corporate goliath that is Vice? Will Kelly overcome her violent memories and live a normal life? Could Bruce Willis ever actually act? Like ever?
Pros
- I dunno, it’s short I guess
Cons
- Doesn’t seem to have an ounce of originality
- Bruce Willis is terrible
- Some of the other actors are worse
Verdict
Ah, the dichotomy of the human nature. If you give a man freedom to act out his primal, twisted desires and fantasies in a controlled environment will that make him a better, more adjusted person in real life? It’s tackling this issue that makes Westwor…. wait, this isn’t a Michael Crichton 70’s classic?! It’s just some shitty knock off with bit ideas from other sci fi movies stapled on top and squished through a laminator. My mistake.
From the opening scene in this movie I wanted to leave. I will concede that this scene may have been intentionally shitty but the rest of the movie didn’t get much better. The recipe is pretty simple, take the idea from a classic movie – Westworld in this case – mix in some ideas from other well known movies (Bladerunner, Matrix and yes even Robocop), stick two washed up actors in the lead in an attempt to fool the general public and viola! Maybe I’m being a bit hard on Thomas Jane here, but to say Bruce Willis has gone slowly down hill since 1999 is an understatement, more like plummet to the bottom and crawl around for a while – it boggles the mind that this man once graced the screen as Lt John McClane (I’ve blocked Die Hard 4 and 5 from my mind).
If you are a fan of mindless shit then this is a great movie for you. 2/10