THE BODY POLITIC
Actor Bale transformed himself to play former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney
It did not occur to me until halfway through a screening of Adam McKay’s biopic that the title, Vice, referred to the job title of Dick Cheney, 46th vice-president of the United States, 2001-2009, under George W. Bush. I thought it was McKay’s way of saying the guy was evil.
But by the end of the film’s twoplus hours, what comes across is not a portrait of evil so much as a supreme opportunist. He’s like the motorist who’s primed and ready to leap from his car and direct traffic if the stoplights should fail. Except that
in Cheney’s case, one of those lights-out moments was 9-11. And the traffic was in the air, to be shot down if necessary. Later, the former defence secretary would enthusiastically play a key role in the war on terror.
Christian Bale excels in another of those I-can’t-believe-it’s-Christian-Bale roles; the actor gained 45 pounds, thickened his neck, bleached his eyebrows and somehow even arranged to have the same Jan. 30 birthday as Cheney. We first meet him as a ne’er-do-well college student in the 1960s, but after a stern talking-to by his wife (Amy Adams, excellent as always) he shapes up and joins the political fray in Washington.
There he decides — seemingly on a whim — to throw his lot in with the Republican party, and finds a mentor in Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), whose path he would cross many times over the next three decades and four heart attacks. (Cheney’s attacks were so frequent that in the movie he takes to announcing them casually, the way one would a bad cold.)
Vice is writer-director McKay’s second foray into non-fiction; the first was 2015’s The Big Short, which featured many of the same cast, told the story of the 2008 financial crisis and won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. But it’s worth remembering that this is the same guy who gave us Will Ferrell in Anchorman, Step Brothers and The Other Guys.
There’s more than a little of that McKay in Vice, which has the same scattershot editing style as The Big Short — not least in that 2006 episode when Cheney scattershot a guy while quail hunting. Quick-cut montages catch us up on the rise of Fox News (starring Naomi Watts!), the Plame affair, the smoking gun/mushroom cloud rationale for invading Iraq and the “unitary executive theory,” a legal argument that boils down to: “Whatever the president does is legal by virtue of the fact that she’s president.” Or he.
McKay does more boiling down here than a sugar shack in February, and viewers should not confuse this amusing historical romp with actual history. (Hard to do when one scene features Alfred Molina as a waiter offering “enhanced interrogation” and “extraordinary rendition” as though they’re cuts of beef.)
It’s very funny at times, not least a fake-out where you think the movie might be over when it’s only halfway there, and a heartfelt narrator in the form of Jesse Plemons. But Vice doesn’t seem to be sure whether it’s going for a tone of hijinks or moral outrage. The Big Short managed a perfect mix, thanks to characters trying to uncover and publicize the corruption in the marketplace.
Here, everyone’s on the same side, whether it’s Eddie Marsan as defence policy wonk Paul Wolfowitz, Don McManus as lawyer David Addington, or Sam Rockwell as a barely there George W. No one so much as lifts a finger to Cheney: When he offers to lead Bush’s transition team and is told that’s not something a vice-president does, his response is brief and telling: “It is now.”