Emmett/Furla Films, K5 International, Aperture Entertainment,
Thomas Jane, Bruce Willis, Ambyr Childers
Julian Michaels (Bruce Willis) has developed an adult luxury resort where for a price you can experience anything you want. Filled with lifelike robots, you can murder, rape, and live just about any fantasy you can think of with impunity. But when one of the robots, Kelly (Ambry Childers) becomes self aware and begins to doubt the “life” she’s leading, she disappears and works with Roy (Thomas Jane) a cop who is set on shutting down Vice at any cost. The chase is on.
This film had a “WestWorld” feel to it. Sure enough, it’s based on the earlier 1973 Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin film that was a surprisingly unique and clever film that never garnered much attention. I have to be cautious, as this review of Vice may end up being more about WestWorld than it is about Vice. It’s too bad that the original never got the attention it deserved as it was an excellent film, but perhaps it was ahead of it’s time. Not many people today will have ever heard of it. I also understand a TV Series in the works for 2015 called WestWorld with the original concept of three lands, WestWorld, Medieval World, and RomanWorld will be dealt with. This is how the original story differs from Vice. Vice is one park which reminds me a lot of The Matrix as almost and alternate reality. There is very little division between Vice and the regular world. Also, WestWorld was fascinated by the technology of making a human-like android creature who looked, acted, and felt human, but experts can tell the difference because of the hands. Guns would not fire at a warm blooded creature so you were safe from getting into a gunfight with another human, but could kill robots all day if you wish. In Vice, we’re much more sophisticated in 2015 than we were in 1973, so we are supposed to just accept the differences, and the subtleties of the technology are just intended to be accepted. Instead it becomes very much more like Terminator or Total Recall which is a chase down that anything else. That is the major flaw I see in Vice, and it suffers because there is no emphasis on this intriguing vacation spot for the very rich, and is more about conquering the runaway robot that could bring everything down. But if anything, it really wanted to make me hunt down my old VHS tape of WestWorld and watch it again, and I can promise I’ll be watching for the series as soon as it comes out. Vice was ok, and was exciting and thrilling and all, but rather one dimensional which lacked the rich story that is should have had. So for a chase and shoot action adventure, give it a go, but if you ever have the chance, check out the Yul Brynner rampaging robot turned aware in the 1973 movie. It was a movie way ahead of it’s time.
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