Vice is Broke (2025)
Directed by: Eddie Huang
Premise: A documentary about the rise and fall of the Vice Media company.
What Works: Vice Media came out of the cultural margins and at one point seemed poised to change the media landscape before abruptly and spectacularly collapsing. Vice is Broke is made by one of the company’s former contributors and the documentary is produced in the style of Vice’s popular HBO program. Eddie Huang gives Vice is Broke the irreverent gonzo journalism quality that distinguished the Vice brand. Huang has a distinct voice and he gives the documentary character. Vice is Broke brings together a collection of distinct voices who recall the rise and fall of the company and their recollections mix fond nostalgia with regret and self-examination. Vice was known to distort and exploit its subjects. Huang recalls his discomfort while profiling the infamous Sausage Castle and the way Vice created violent images of people in developing nations. The documentary also alleges that Vice cheated its creators out of profits and out of credit which impaired their careers. Vice is Broke is fascinating in part for these inside stories but also for its larger implications. This documentary is a portrait of new media compromised and ultimately destroyed by the same forces plaguing legacy media.
What Doesn’t: Early on in Vice is Broke, Eddie Huang tries to differentiate his film from other documentaries, taking a swipe at filmmaker Alex Gibney. But Huang approaches this production in a straightforward manner. Vice is Broke doesn’t have any experimental or particularly edgy qualities. The investigation is far reaching but it’s also disjointed and incomplete. There are some great segments and Huang speaks to a lot of interesting people but the pieces don’t form a coherent whole. That’s especially evident in the profile of Gavin McInnes, who was a writer in the early years of Vice and later founded the right-wing extremist group The Proud Boys. The interview is very interesting and in the voiceover Huang suspects that McInnes doesn’t actually believe what he’s saying but the profile stops without getting any deeper. The story of Vice’s financial foibles is also incomplete. The company was valued in the billions of dollars but it’s unclear where that money went or if Vice was simply overvalued. Huang claims he is owed money from the company but that narrative is buried and we don’t get much detail about Vice’s last days.
Disc extras: Available on the MUBI streaming service.
Bottom Line: Vice is Broke is a provocative examination of new media. Its parts don’t quite come tougher but there is a lot in this documentary that is fascinating and it’s an effective history of new media in the early twenty-first century.
Episode: #1063 (September 7, 2025)