Bale is great, but Vice is plodding
Vice C ert: 15A 2hrs 12mins
Christian Bale has already won a Golden Globe for his performance as Dick Cheney in Vice, and picked up both Bafta and Oscar nominations for his efforts too, the latter being just one of an impressive eight nominations the film amassed this week.
And it doesn’t take long to see why Bale is being so fêted – the transformation of this normally slim 44-year-old British actor into the balding, seriously overweight, 60-something former American Vice President is simply astonishing.
Yes, it owes a lot to padding, prosthetics and weight gain – Bale prides himself on his ability to both gain and lose weight for roles and reportedly ate a ‘lot of pies’ to add the three stone necessary to convincingly play Cheney. And there’s an obvious debt to hair and make-up too. But the underlying performance – a subtle and brilliantly researched blend of voice, mannerisms, posture and gait – shines right through. For once, it is no exaggeration to say that Bale disappears completely into the part he is playing.
But, sadly, that’s not going to be anything like enough as far as mainstream audiences here are concerned, who are likely to find themselves mystified by how this Adam McKay-directed picture ever found itself nominated for a Golden Globe in the ‘musical or comedy’ category. McKay may have directed the Ron Burgundy films and have Will Ferrell among his executive producers, but for audiences here, a film that has Cheney and former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld as two of its main characters, the intended subversive laughs are few and far between.
In short, this is one of those films that’s been made ‘over there’ that, Bafta voters apart, just isn’t going to go down very well ‘over here’. Then again, American audiences probably wouldn’t be very interested if anyone ever makes a feature film about Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Vice, you see, tells the American side of that story, portraying Cheney as both the Machiavellian power behind George W Bush’s presidential throne and a man determined to go to war with someone as retribution for 9/11, just not over-picky about with whom.
Put like that it sounds quite interesting, doubly so when the obvious parallels with the Trump era of today become apparent. But McKay takes such a long run at it, beginning his story way back in 1963, when Cheney was little more than a drunken university drop-out, and gets bogged down in Republican party history and American constitutional law along the very long way. If you ever wondered what ‘unitary executive theory’ was, now is your chance to find out. Yes, I found I could contain my excitement too.
McKay, who worked with Bale on The Big Short, is clearly aware of the dryness of his subject and employs every creative and would-be comedic trick he can think of to leaven things. There’s an unknown sardonic narrator (to be fair, discovering who he is provides a brilliant late twist), sarcastic captions, speeches to camera, spoof Shakespeare, gratuitous f-words and at one point an alternate ‘and they all lived happily ever after’ ending that comes complete with its own set of closing credits. I glanced at my watch and almost groaned when I discovered the film, with its obvious echoes of Michael Moore, still had more than an hour to go. Tedium definitely sets in.
Bale’s wonderful central performance is undeniably surrounded by some classy supporting turns. Amy Adams impresses as Cheney’s equally ruthless and ambitious wife, Lynne, while Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell provide equal measures of amusement and alarm as
Bale reportedly ate ‘a lot of pies’ to add three stone to convincingly play Cheney
the trigger-happy Rumsfeld and the easily manipulated George W Bush. Adams and Rockwell both got Oscar nominations this week, although, if they set the standard, how Carell missed out beats me.
I’m sure those with a serious interest in the wielding of political power will find more to admire here, but I’m not uninterested in such things and it didn’t work for me. Nevertheless, I have no problem at all wishing Bale every success come awards night. All those pies should not be in vain.