Too much of everything

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

An Exercise In Nonsense

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Michael Madsen is an actor who seems stuck to the "Mr. Orange" role he played in Tarantino's masterpiece Reservoir Dogs, and that's not a tradition he breaks here in Vice. The cover looked promising, with Madsen holding a shotgun and Daryl Hannah below him. Looked good and was good.Madsen plays Max Walker, one of those tough 'personal-demons' cops who fills a mysterious hole in his life with prostitutes and booze. His partner, Salt (Hannah), covers Walker at the beginning by planting evidence. Even before that, Walker has a long conversation with a prostitute, that ends in the obvious. The other members of Walker's department are equally as corrupt, or dubious as to the corruption. Suddenly, a string of murders are committed and Walker finds himself in the middle of it.The plot sounds stereotypical, and it is. The film is a collection of classic clichés that somehow cinch together masterfully. Nothing about this movie sounded good, I only watched it to numb my brain after a tough day. I found myself increasingly glad I watched.The acting is great. Madsen knows he's playing a scumbag and plays a great one. He's Mr. Blonde again, but it's a role he knows well and it showcases his talents. Hannah is a bit of a bait-and-switch, but what screen time she has is fine. The supporting cast also remarkable, including Mykelti Williamson (Bubba from Forrest Gump), John Cassini, and the always fantastic Mark Boone Junior.For a film that is 70% talk, the dialogue is really good. I was interested in these characters and their lives, especially the lines given to Madsen. He does a great job with the lines he's given, which are noir one-liners that fit great with the source material. The pacing is slow but the dialogue and action make up for it.Overall Vice was an enjoyable little action film that gave me what I wanted; Noir Crime with Mystery and a great main character to follow. Enjoy.

Classic bete noire: The genre persists in many forms.Vice is not a "slow" movie, nor is it pedantic. Vice does require intense attention to each participant and the environment, as it should, for the writer and director show common people in extraordinary circumstances.Madsen and Hanna may not seem "common", but see them at the bottom of the ladder in their environment. The acting is exquisite, the sets sublime (in the sense that they disappear and yet contribute a force on the viewer), and all is wholly believable.Vice is paced to the stark reality of an undercover existence, of competing loyalties, of personal trust and values, of redemption. Best of all: It takes until the very end of this film, but there is resolution.A hard film, but well worth the effort.

I picked this movie up at a mickey d's red box and i wasn't expecting anything special. I figured if it was i would have heard about it. What i got was an OK cop movie with a kick ass cast. Madsen was awesome especially in the overdubbed readings. It made me wish he would have been max Payne instead of mark. Hannah managed to look about 10 years younger and she played the shy girl cop very well. But what made the movie for me was the addition of Alex Krycek( nick lea ) from the x-files. That put a huge smile on my face. So what holds this movie back? Well the writing was pretty weak and the story had more than a couple holes. I liked the idea of a drug bust that changes everyones lives through paranoia and broken trust. The thing that really brought the movie down though was the surprisingly bad acting in some scenes. Mostly scenes with Hannah and Madden. The car scene where walker and Sampson get into an argument and walker says, "do you wanna f**k with me" was possibly the worst scene of Michael Madsens career. not a bad movie. You should see it just for Nick Lea and Madsen together.

"Vice" is a low budget cop noir movie where everyone is flawed, corrupt and/or dying.It tries to be another "LA Confidential" or even "Street Kings" but falls short due to its simple characters and sets and limited plot.Like other cop noir, this one begins with a voice-over. Michael Madsen's "Walker" stands in a church observing how no one is really alive. We're just all dead or dying. From there we jump to streetwalker sex and then a drug bust gone bad. During the take down, one of the dealers escapes in a bloody shootout - setting up the rest of the movie. Cops involved in the bust start dying and the Feds come in to investigate.So who's killing the vice cops? Is it vengeful drug dealers - or members of the unit with secrets to hide? Or maybe it's a homicide cop on the take? Soon no one trusts anyone and everyone is a suspect.We'd care more about the answers to those questions if the movie had more depth or complexity. It does not. The main character, Madsen's "Walker," is the typical blunt instrument. His main skill is dogged determination. His job is to find out who's killing his vice detectives – and why. The rest of his crew is similarly one dimensional, making it hard to care about anyone as they die.The limited sets contribute to this feeling of apathy. Walker moves in circle that soon becomes repetitive. It's back and forth between the cop shop, a bar and his car. He's like a player caught in an endless video game loop with no way out.The best part of this film is watching Executive Producer (yes EP) Daryl Hannah slum around. Her "Salt" is a pick-up truck driving undercover narc who looks like Liv Tyler on a bad hair day. The most innocent of the vice cops, Hannah's "Salt" spends most of the movie with her beautiful baby blues covered by black bangs as if she doesn't want to see all the corruption around her.The movie does end with a nice twist and since everyone has secrets, there are enough red herring to keep you guessing until the end.My advice, get this one when you have a free video rental coupon.