The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Engrossing ‘Vice’ given ‘The Big Short’ treatment
It won’t be for those with adoration for Dick Cheney, but biopic from ‘Big Short’ director is inventive and enthralling
It won’t be for those with adoration for Dick Cheney, but biopic from ‘Big Short’ director is inventive and enthralling.
“Vice” is an at-times-comedic, at-times-scathing and always-interesting portrait of Dick Cheney’s ascent to becoming, arguably, the most powerful vice president this country has ever seen and then of his time in that office. ¶ And it knows it won’t appeal to everyone. ¶ The dense film launches with on-screen text stating that while the story it is telling is true, Cheney was incredibly secretive and, thus, the filmmakers did the best (expletive) job they could in telling his tale. ¶ It ends with a heated argument between a progressive and a conservative in a focus group, the latter complaining about the movie being a liberal piece of garbage, the former about the big orange “Cheeto” his verbal sparring partner and others more recently elected to the highest office in the land. ¶ Yeah, “Vice” is that kind of movie.
This offbeat approach to this Cheney biopic makes sense when you know “Vice” is written and directed by Adam McKay, who deservedly earned praise and accolades for 2015’s exquisitely made “The Big Short,” an Academy Award-nominated comedydrama about the financial crisis of the late 2000s brought upon by the collapse of the housing market.
With “Vice,” McKay gives Cheney’s story the “Big Short” treatment — the film is chock full of little digressions and absurdities while being incredibly smart — if not quite to such a satisfying effect.
McKay also recruited some “Big Short” alums to play key figures here, most notably an increasingly unrecognizable Christian Bale as Cheney, the actor reportedly packing on 40 pounds to play the eventual vice president. It is an outstanding performance by an actor who’s a stranger neither to outstanding performances nor to weight manipulation for a role.
McKay’s version of Cheney’s story begins with a drunk-driving incident in Casper, Wyoming, when Cheney is a young man. The film then yanks us to the minutes following the 9/11 attacks, with the now Vice President Cheney trying to make it through the chaotic halls of the White House to the Situation Room. (It is the kind of yo-yoing “Vice” offers throughout its twoplus hours and that helps keep the film engaging and infused with energy.)
In the famed conference room, we see the country’s No. 2 — President George W. Bush is not there — acting very much like its No. 1. For instance, Cheney tells Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld over the phone that the latter has presidential consent to shoot down any aircraft deemed to be a threat.
Returning to Cheney’s earlier days, while he’s working a blue-collar job, we meet the woman he will spend his life with, Lynne (Amy Adams), furious with him the day after a bar fight had landed him in jail. She wonders aloud if she has chosen the wrong man.
“Can you change?” she asks with a tone of voice suggesting she is skeptical he can.
“I won’t ever disappoint you again, Lynne,” he says with conviction.
He doesn’t, growing into the ambitious partner Lynne wants.
He first gets a gig as a Congressional intern, which leads to him becoming a trusted operative for Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), then a U.S. representative from Illinois.
At one point, we witness Rumsfeld tell Cheney that the U.S. will conduct bombing missions in Cambodia, and the inexperienced Cheney seems perplexed about whether it’s the morally correct thing to do.
“What do we believe?” a sincere Cheney asks Rumsfeld. Astonished by what he’s just been asked, Rumsfeld laughs at him hysterically as he leaves the room.
Not quite a decade later, we see Cheney running for the U.S. Congress himself to represent Wyoming, the heart trouble that will plague him for years beginning and threatening to take him out of the race. Not willing to let that happen, Lynne gives speeches on his behalf that appeal to the right-wingers of the state — she makes clear she’s anti-affirmative action and against bra burning — to try to avoid any decline in the polls while her husband is incapacitated.
He wins the race in 1978 and very much enjoys the Reagan years that come not that long after.
“It was the (expletive) 1980s, and it was a hell of a time to be Dick Cheney,” says a narrator (Jesse Plemons of “The Post” and “Game Night”) whose connection to Cheney is kept from us until nearly the end of the film.
Eventually — following many events, a key one being the revelation by one of the Cheneys’ two daughters, Mary (Alison Pill of “Newsroom” and “American Horror Story”), that she is a lesbian — we come to the point where the younger George Bush (Sam Rockwell) asks Cheney to be his running mate.
Lynne is against her husband accepting the offer because, as they two often have discussed, the vice presidency is a position with very little actual power.
But, Dick begins to wonder, does it have to be that way?
The time “Vice” devotes to Cheney’s days in that office is its most compelling, although, again, whether you take it as fair and accurate will depend largely on your political leanings.
Along with a very slanted look at Cheney’s life, McKay offers an enthralling examination of power — or, more specifically, Cheney’s evolving relationship with it. At first, he is a servant to it; then he wields it. (McKay does allow Cheney to seem relatable when it comes to his role as a father, at least.)
The cast as a whole deserves a lot of credit for the strength of “Vice,” as well. While Bale (“The Fighter,” the “Dark Knight” trilogy) is the standout, Adams (“Arrival,” “American Hustle”) and Rockwell (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) are especially good, too, the latter making you forget you’re not watching the real second President Bush.
However, the opposite is distractingly true of Carell — also in theaters recently with an excellent performance in “Beautiful Boy” and very solid in director Robert Zemeckis’ new film “Welcome to Marwen” — as Rumsfeld, although the portrayal eventually gets some traction.
After myriad enjoyable scenes that include an imagined Shakespearean exchange between Cheney and Lynne in the privacy of their home and a set of fake end credits — but before the argument in the focus group — Bale’s Cheney turns to the camera to make his case directly to the audience as to why we needed him in office.
“It’s been my pleasure to be your servant,” he concludes.
If you’re still engrossed by this special cinematic experience at that point, you probably feel the pleasure was all his.
The time “Vice” devotes to Cheney’s days in the vice presidency is its most compelling, although, again, whether you take it as fair and accurate will depend largely on your political leanings.