Vice is a really unpleasant film. That’s the intent to some degree of course, but it doesn’t make it any more fulfilling to sit through. The movie is over two hours of a man reminding us how awful the Bush administration was and more specifically how bad a person Dick Cheney is. Adam McKay clearly wanted to make this movie for a long time, his mixture of hatred of and fascination with the former U.S. Vice President boiling over as though it had forcibly been repressed in the decade since he left office. But now McKay has let all of it out, venting, educating (I’m sure he believes), and breaking down the minutia of what made Cheney such a terrible and powerful political figure in admittedly creative and sometimes impressive ways. But there’s no constructive reason for this, there’s nothing meaningful McKay ultimately has to say with this satirical biopic.
Told from the point-of-view of an Iraq war veteran (Jesse Plemons), the film chronicles the trajectory of the career of Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) from a Yale drop-out Wyoming lineman to working in the Nixon administration under Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carrell) through his term as Secretary of Defence during the first Bush administration and finally becoming George W. Bush’s (Sam Rockwell) running mate and manipulating the foreign and domestic policy of the United States during the second Bush administration.
Like McKay’s last film The Big Short, Vice operates under the presumption that its audience doesn’t know anything about its subject matter. But while The Big Short was dealing in the intricacies of the housing crisis, Vice is about much more common knowledge history and politics; yet it still condescends to its audience, especially millennials and working class Americans who it paints in broad stereotypes on the occasions they appear. The manner in which the movie talks down to you and takes glee in spelling out the political corruption taking place, it feels as though McKay is pointing the finger at his American audience, while smugly basking in his own observations and research. There’s emphasis placed on scenes where focus groups are falling for doctored terminology, or how Cheney and others confidently get away with things in the knowledge that average Americans won’t care about boring bureaucratic details that enable abuses of power. And often these are brought into contrast with brief yet brutal scenes depicting resulting atrocities. Rumsfeld gloating about Americas’ global power is cut against the bombing of a harmless Vietnamese village; Cheney reconstructing the government definition of torture is presented alongside terrified Muslims being waterboarded. Eisenstein himself couldn’t have edited it better. Obviously the goal with such technique is to present these characters in the worst light possible, and while it’s aggravating, it’s not entirely for the reason the film intends. Because of the comedic lens which halfway normalizes these interactions and the air of superiority, you’re more angry with the filmmakers than with the politicians. Way more people than McKay thinks knows what happened during those governments -even when in office, Cheney was never a beloved figure. This is just preaching.
The text of this film is so spiteful that it overshadows the genuinely interesting and original stuff in it. Some of the presentation gags like Cheney elaborately proposing an obscene display as a showcase of his skilful spin language or a false ending complete with a half minute of credits are decently entertaining touches. There’s even a bit where Dick and Lynn Cheney (Amy Adams) have a Shakespearean conversation completely in verse that’s very evocative of Richard III, and a scene late in the movie where Cheney breaks the fourth wall that’s even more so. But these comedic flourishings could just as easily be too clumsy and lazy, such as the appearance of a drunk and disorderly George W. Bush at his fathers’ gala in the early ‘90s, or Cheney’s heart following his transplant in 2012 being visibly black.
Vice boasts a talented cast however, and I can’t say Christian Bale’s performance isn’t good. It’s not just the incredible make-up and prosthetics, he replicates Cheney’s mannerisms and voice quite well in a way that’s only halfway to parody, which is about right for this movie. His Big Short co-star Steve Carrell seems to be enjoying playing the amoral and slimy Rumsfeld after recent heavier roles like in Beautiful Boy and Last Flag Flying. Amy Adams does well as the ambitious Lynn, with Alison Pill and Lily Rabe as Mary and Liz, the formers’ homosexuality forming a not insignificant subplot. Sam Rockwell manages to be mildly entertaining as W, but rarely rises above a caricature. The cast also includes Tyler Perry as Colin Powell, Justin Kirk as Scooter Libby, LisaGay Hamilton as Condoleeza Rice, Eddie Marsan as Paul Wolfowitz, Shea Whigam as Lynn’s father, and an Alfred Molina cameo in what might be the movies’ funniest moment.
For a film about Dick Cheney, Vice is not at all interested in any nuances about its title character, which is why the story is told by a third party. This makes for a film that feels very inhuman, which again is kind of what it’s going for, but it achieves this largely in a roundabout obnoxious way. The political landscape of America right now is chaotic, and the last thing a lot of Americans need is a depressing reminder of the seemingly inescapable pattern of hateful politicians achieving undeserved power and mocking the people with it. They deserve even less a movie that does the same thing.
Comments
Post a Comment