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Review: ‘Vice’ is a cheap, unimaginative version of ‘Blade Runner’

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Dystopian sci-fi for dummies, director Brian A. Miller’s “Vice” stars Bruce Willis as Julian Michaels, the mogul behind the titular pleasure palace, a resort where human-like “artificials” — mostly in the form of beautiful women — succumb to customers’ depraved wishes in a moody nightclub-hotel atmosphere straight out of ‘90s late-night cable.

Stringy-haired rogue cop Roy (Thomas Jane) would love to shut it down, considering the spillover mayhem it generates. He gets his window when a circuit glitch makes blond artificial Kelly (Ambyr Childers) self-aware of the routine abuse she’s endured (and erased by lab technicians every day). She takes off, igniting a violent hunt by Julian’s minions, and a plan for revenge from the sensitive robotics engineer (Bryan Greenberg) who originally created Kelly.

“Vice” is “Blade Runner” on the cheap and minus the imagination. It’s content to serve up a fast-food diet of blue lighting, gun battles and dopey dialogue characteristic of any B-movie action flick.

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Perhaps aware of how little its audience might pay attention to anything not running, fired off or blown up, the movie’s characters explain themselves regularly. Willis, meanwhile, mutters his executive-suite-villain lines as if he’s afraid of waking you.

“Vice.”

MPAA rating: R for violence, language, sexual content/nudity.

Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes.

Playing: AMC Burbank Town Center 8.

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