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Vice Blu-ray Review

viceDirector: Brian A Miller

Cast: Thomas Jane, Bruce Willis, Ambyr Childers, Bryan Greenberg

Certificate: 18

Running Time: 96 minutes

Special Features: Behind the Scenes / Cast and Crew Commentary

Man versus technology is an age old tale of the cinematic world. As far back as you go you can find instances of artificial intelligence on film but recent years have seen the topic raise to the ‘top of the plot’ ranks again. Earlier this year we were treated to the stunning Ex_Machina, next month we get a fifth trip with Arnie’s Terminator, even television is jumping on-board with Humans airing on Channel 4 in the next few weeks.

In what could be considered an over saturated market Vice does offer an interesting spin. Set in a near future, Bruce Willis’ Julian runs a kind of perverted amusement park, come brothel. He has created a city known as Vice (not to be confused with the other Vice city – though the two places a have a lot in common), a place where anything is legal. Want to rob a bank? Commit a murder? Cheat on your spouse? Then this is the place for you, and don’t worry about the consequences of your actions as all the residents are robots, not that they know it. Instead, at the end of each day they have their memory reset, perpetually living the same day over and over. Machines don’t have rights you see, but the world starts to unravel when Kelly’s (Chiders) reset goes awry and she is able to access all her memories.

Escaping the facility she comes face to face with her maker, Evan (Greenberg) and vows to stop Julian and his dastardly establishment. Thomas Jane’s Detective Roy, who has been looking for dirt on Julian for years, is more than happy to help. What follows is a final hour of gunfights, chase sequences, watery romance and a confused mess.

Dealing with themes of morality, free will and corruption, Vice has some interesting ideas but fails to do them justice. This is mainly due to the jumbled plot. Vice starts well but somewhere around the middle it gets confused, the pace starts to drag and the plot seemingly morphing into a different film altogether. The sub-plot of Kelly’s appearance is meant as a twist, but anyone familiar with the genre will call it in the opening minutes (I did). Then somewhere around the final ten minute mark we suddenly swing back to the original story, almost as though the middle section never happened.

Thomas Jane is on top Christopher Lambert form – has anyone ever seen these men in the same room together? Personally I’ve always been somewhat of a Thomas Jane fan, granted Deep Blue Sea and The Punisher are brilliant guilty pleasures, but both Stander and The Mist showcase just how good Jane can be. So which category does Vice fall into? Well it’s somewhere in the middle, it’s a harmless but forgettable genre movie.

In terms of special features it’s all rather vanilla, with just a trailer and a twelve minute behind-the-scenes featurette. The featurette is fairly standard with snippets of filming spliced with interviews with director Brian Miller as well as all the principal players (with the exception of Mr Willis).

Vice is out to buy on Blu-Ray and DVD from Monday 8th June.

Kat Hughes is a UK born film critic and interviewer who has a passion for horror films. An editor for THN, Kat is also a Rotten Tomatoes Approved Critic. She has bylines with Ghouls Magazine, Arrow Video, Film Stories, Certified Forgotten and FILMHOUNDS and has had essays published in home entertainment releases by Vinegar Syndrome and Second Sight. When not writing about horror, Kat hosts micro podcast Movies with Mummy along with her five-year-old daughter.

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