2 out of 5

Directed by: Brian A. Miller

Aw dang MORE Brian miller and Bruce Willis?  Does it get any better?  Yes, of course it does.  But: following on the back of The Prince, Vice shows Miller’s ability to helm a low budget knockoff flick – This an interpretation of ‘Westworld’ with dashes of Blade Runner and every other “we made androids that are indistinguishable from humans!” movie – with passable flair, and a believable passion for what he does, even if the end result is rather unimpressive.  And as a notch above Prince, he also seems to have a cast interested in the film itself – most of the roles are believably committed, quality of the dialogue notwithstanding.  Certainly none of this covers up the cookie-cutter setup and incredibly limited scope of a valid sci-fi flick idea – things start out pretty compelling, actually, but once the direction is established, the film goes tunnel vision and gets stupider and stupider – but acknowledgements for a movie that could’ve been infinitely worse.

Vice is about a “resort” run by Bruce Willis (playing generic evil boss man, his fallback roll for all those recent Lionsgate flicks) that is staffed by androids, to whom the residents can do anything and everything.  …But what happens when one of those androids “wakes up” and escapes the resort?  Answer: explosions.  Because.

Blu-ray notes: Matches The Prince, with cast interviews that are then cobbled together for a behind the scenes, and a commentary with director and some actors.  Miller seems like a nice guy with good intentions, but his references to generic classic movies peg him as a generic movie lover (not a bad thing, but the influences aren’t going to result in anything new), and his insistence that one or two scenes featuring women prove the film isn’t chauvinistic is unfortunately one of those things that ignorant chauvinists tend to say.