"Vice" doesn't bother telling us who the protagonist is until midway through the movie, but at least that information arrives sooner than his motivation (which is never). It's a mess akin to midnight-movie classics "Birdemic" or "The Room," and the complete lack of finesse in any aspect of its creation is matched only by the abundance of over-confidence the creative team seemed to have in making it.
Despite the presence of Bruce Willis and Thomas Jane, "Vice" is amateur-hour science fiction, watchable mostly as a spectator sport for a crowd of jeering fans.
Watching "Vice."
I don't know where to begin. "Vice" isn't sure, either. The main character is Roy (Thomas Jane), a poorly wigged cop who chews matches because cigarettes aren't cool anymore. He's on a case that leads him to Vice, an elite resort where rich men murder, rape and assault robot women. Roy hates robots, and he hates Vice because sometimes the men who rape robots rape and murder real people outside of the Vice resort. Julian (Bruce Willis), who clearly filmed his scenes in two days because he never leaves one room, is the owner of Vice, who argues that because they're robots and his property, bad guys should be allowed to rape them all the time. He also doesn't really care about the world outside of Vice because it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Kelly (Ambyr Childers) is introduced as a cute waitress, but after she is assaulted by a patron, we learn she's actually a robot. Unfortunately the memory-wipe restores her memories of every other assault, which causes her to escape the Vice resort. What ensues is a confusing 90-minute chase sequence where you're never quite sure who the hell wants what or where this ridiculous story is going. I guess Kelly is actually the main character. It's hard to be sure. Her wig doesn't even sit on her head properly from scene to scene. It gave me motion sickness.
Part of what makes "Vice" such a difficult movie to watch (besides all the men being potential rapists, a resort designed to let people, y'know, rape robots, and the complete lack of interest in even acknowledging how the film handles these topics) is that there's absolutely zero clarity. The world outside Vice is a gray wasteland in which every building looks identical. The world inside Vice is supposed to look more colorful, but everything is filmed exactly the same, so you can't really tell them apart. Also, apparently, the mechanics of the Vice program are insanely confusing because real people walk in and out of it at will. Constantly. There's zero security, except when Kelly tries to escape, at which point they blow up the parking lot with grenade launchers.
The ideas at the center of "Vice" aren't anything unique to the genre. Robots who learn to live. Alternate realities where the frailties of human morality are exposed by technology. Hell, hard-boiled cops protecting a pretty cyborg woman. It's not as if "Vice" is breaking new ground. The problem is that, like its world-building, "Vice" is never clear just what it's trying to say by mixing and matching these classic devices. I'm sure writer Andre Fabrizio didn't intend on the movie being about a douchebag cop killing innocent security guards in order to give a bunch of multiple assault victims their horrific memories back, smugly telling them "Welcome to reality" in his worst Snake Plissken impersonation. But that's basically the story as filmed, and there's not much else to the movie I can use to take an alternate perspective.
"Vice" is an abysmally stupid movie. It's D-league schlock. At best, it's a peanut-gallery movie, ripe for a Rifftrax. But, I mean, shit. There are better crappy movies to watch and make fun of, and dozens of episodes of "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" you could be watching instead. Don't bother with it.