review-vice-2008

Director: Raul Inglis | 95 minutes | drama, thriller, crime | Actors: Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Mykelti Williamson, Mark Boone Junior, Kurupt, John Cassini, Nicholas Lea, Aaron Pearl, Matthew Robert Kelly, Peter LaCroix, Emy Aneke, Betty Linde, Justine Warrington, Martin Cummins, Frank Cassini

Advice in advance. First take one or two tablets of paracetamol and then watch this movie. Unless of course if you are a student at the Film Academy, this is the perfect opportunity to learn something about how it should definitely not be done: bombastic religious, philosophical nonsense, a portion of raunchy, gratuitous sex, cheap juggling with flashbacks and accelerated images. To give the meager story supposedly depth and an overdose of tormented looks from the protagonist.

The main character. Max Walker is a tortured police officer who lost his wife to a deadly disease. Every day he drinks himself into a coma and he picks up whores on the street all the time, with a lot of emphasis on the fact that he can only let them jerk off or at most let them suck cock. Whether that is in order not to tarnish the memory of his deceased wife or for religious reasons, remains a mystery, who knows may say it. And as if all this wasn’t bad enough, all too often he gets his colleagues into a pang of conscience by asking them over and over to help him correct his “mistakes.” This is also a fact that is emphasized, but an explanation why Walker so often has to cover up his mistakes, well …

The intrigue. Together with his partner Sampson (Mykelti Williamson), Walker poses as a drug dealer during an undercover operation. However, the criminals smell fuse and the moment Walker’s buddy Samspon threatens to be murdered, their colleagues invade. Despite their quick actions, one of the criminals manages to escape. When Walker, instead of the injured Sampson, chases after Salt (Daryl Hannah), he shoots a girl. On closer inspection, the girl turns out to be unarmed. In order not to get into trouble, Walker asks Salt to retrieve one of the guns of the shot criminals so that he can deposit it with the girl and claim to have acted in self-defense. In the days that followed, all the colleagues involved in the raid were liquidated one by one. A large consignment of drugs also appears to have been stolen. At first, the escaped criminal is suspected, but when Walker and Sampson find his body in a dump, they know a corrupt cop is at work.

The conclusion. Every minute spent on this horribly bad film is one too many, so a brief advice: don’t watch it.