Pretty Good

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Blistering performances.

While this movie came out before Westworld the hbo series, the similarities were striking. Enough for me to presume that the hbo series has more in common with the 1973 movie than I would've suspected. Since I haven't seen the 1973 movie yet, I can't determine just how much alike they are.A lot of elements from this movie are similar enough to the hbo series (a single female android inexplicably remembers their past iterations, has memories of a building she's never seen before, and violence committed against them, wakes up during repair, escapes, causes all the other androids to remember and turn against their handlers) to be intriguing, but the intrigue essentially ends there. While Westworld was a big huge place devoted to vice and violence and the like, the place here in "Vice" is essentially limited to a sleazy-looking upscale bordello or hotel. "Cheap and tawdry" best defines the place, as well as the entire aura and tone of the film. Once the female android Kelly escapes, she ends up drawn to a church building, the same one she inexplicably remembered earlier, despite never being there. There she inexplicably finds the original designer of the robots, a guy who is inexplicably young and sexy and who apparently designed Kelly to look just like his dead wife, using his dead wife's DNA. All the while, Thomas Jane, who deserves better than this film, is a cop who is inexplicably in trouble for executing an arrest warrant inside the cheap and tawdry Westworld, and is inexplicably suspended from the police force for investigating an alleged "explosion" which is used as a cover story for Kelly's escape in which she killed some employees there. Despite having compelling evidence to at least investigate the supposed explosion, the police chief suspends him and forbids him from investigating further. Some manner of corrupt intrigue between the police and Cheap and Tawdry Westworld's owner, Julian Michaels (Bruce Willis in a pointless role) is briefly implied, but subsequently dropped and never mentioned again. The fact that Julian Michaels apparently has his own para-military police force with the latest in military technology weaponry is another pretty major "This should be more important than a runaway android" plot point that is subsequently completely ignored and forgotten. The vast majority of the film apart from the setup is basically just chases, with Thomas Jane (who deserves better) thrown in for a laugh. Despite making their escape, Kelly decides she wants to free all the other androids by uploading a program into the Cheap and Tawdry Westworld's systems that will let them all remember everything that ever happened to them. This succeeds, and the androids mercifully decide not to kill everyone or something. Honestly I completely forgot everything about this movie's ending. Apart from the Westworld connection, other reviewers have mentioned just how bad most of the acting is. The writing and the way the film treats things like police procedure, detective-talk, and the fact that a private businessman has his own private army wandering around the city getting into massive gunfights that result in civilian casualties is treated like it's not a Big Effing Deal far worse than anything involving Cheap and Tawdry Westworld. It's written like a teenager whose sole experience with this manner of "adult stuff" is video games like Grand Theft Auto and dumb cop movies where big noisy guns and "ungh sexy chicks hot babes unhh makin fat stacks of cash" is more important and relevant than the fact that a random business asshole has a PRIVATE MILITARY FORCE engaging in shootouts on the streets resulting in civilian casualties and this almost never even comes up at police headquarters beyond an extremely brief "investigation" which is almost immediately forgotten and dropped to focus on "an android ran away"

The best part is how the prude production team wanted to show the decadence while at the same time not showing it.The script is even worse. A stupid story fixed along the way. How can bad people kill other people? Well, the other people are mechanical. Old, boring. The whole world is as today, but somehow the holy ghost knows enough about electronics to inspire a team of engineers to make mechanical people. How do they keep a realistic look? Like the Christian god, they are organic too. And that both metal and organs can be as light as a thin photo model. And when they are killed, only the mechanical part is damaged. And so on. At a certain point it becomes painful.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

This steaming pile is without a doubt a festering regret in the otherwise inoffensive life of Bruce Willis. Granted, not exactly a Shakesperean actor but who hasn't been gratuitously entertained by all of his yippie-ky-yay shoot-em-ups? But after being visually assaulted by this rotting roadkill I just have to believe he was hard up for a quick payday. Yes, I suppose it's partly my own fault because the SMART thing would have been to delete it off DVR when one character said to another, "Jeez, Kel, you make me gonna cry." There was simply no way this could have gone anywhere but horribly wrong after that. This "movie" was nothing more than the low-budget bastard love-child of a blasphemous four-way, wherein "Total Recall", "Blade Runner", and "The Island" all had their way with "Westworld" in a dark alley behind a burned out 7-11, resulting in this vile blasphemy against Nature. If anyone tries to get you to watch it, that person is NOT your friend. In fact you should probably just punch them. Don't worry, it'll be justified as self-defense.

Thomas Jane at his finest, superb acting all around, great plot lines, Bruce Willis in one of his FINEST roles, the script is well thought out, and the director did such a great job bringing it all together, it will make you cry your eyeballs out at the end of the movie, much like the movie old yell er, your heart will ache and you will want to see this movie over and over and over again, especially at the holidays when the whole family is gathered around looking for something to do. I am surprised this movie did not get even more that the 5 academy award nominations it did. I am glad Bruce Willis got an Oscar for his role, I wish Thomas Jane would have got an Oscar also, he is such a superb actor!