Vice will grip you
Vice (M, 132 mins) Directed by Adam McKay Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★
There really is no winning with political biographies of living characters – especially one as contentious, storied and polarising as Dick Cheney.
If you make a dry and academic documentary, one that sticks only to the facts that could not be challenged in a libel case, then you’ll finish up with a mostly unwatchable and completely unwatched dissertation that’ll never find an audience outside specialist film festivals and wherever Noam Chomsky is talking this week.
Or, make a fictionalised, but entertaining version of events, and you’ll be accused of partisan crowd pleasing and still be mostly ignored by anyone not in the choir you are here to preach to.
But, walk a fine line between the two schools and just maybe you can deliver a film that will please its audience and make a few new converts along the way. Writerdirector Adam McKay pulled off exactly that trick with 2015’s The Big Short, and with Vice, his biopic on vice-president Cheney, he very nearly succeeds again.
The difference between the two films is surely that the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 was a lesspolarising subject matter. Everybody, whether you were Red State or Blue, was open to being told how the banks and Wall Street had screwed them over. With Orwellian cynicism, the Republican Party even managed to turn that story to their own advantage in the 2016 election.
But Cheney, with his ties to three Republican administrations, the architect of the war in Iraq, the arch-manipulator of public opinion? He would always be a harder topic to get across the party lines.
McKay opens his tale in 1963, with a hopeless and feckless Cheney booted out of Yale and very nearly losing his marriage as a result of his drinking and fighting.
Witnessing the appalling treatment of a fellow county lineman, Cheney resolves, not to work to better the lot of the working classes, but to make sure he never has to be a member of that class again. From there, McKay’s narrative zips around the major waypoints of Cheney’s career.
The agreement to become Bush Jr’s running mate is depicted as the soft coup that led directly to the vice-president becoming a more potent shaper of world events than any actual president since.
McKay is aided immeasurably by a raft of fantastic performances. Christian Bale and Amy Adams are astonishing as Dick and Lynne Cheney, with the latter offered up as the equal to her husband’s Machiavellian scheming.
Sam Rockwell makes for a crowd-pleasing Bush Jr and Steve Carell is unlikely but effective as Donald Rumsfeld.
Vice is a more nuanced film than I was expecting. I don’t doubt that it is also as close to the truth as we are ever likely to know. In an awards season crammed with clear contenders, it is one to watch out for, and a perversely, bleakly entertaining look at an American tragedy we still live with today. Sink or Swim (M, 122 mins) Directed by Gilles Lellouche Reviewed by James Croot
Lately, Bertrand (Mathieu Amalric) has felt like a square peg in a round hole. Out of work for two years, his days consist of a cocktail of antidepressants and Candy Crush on the couch.
Desperate for some kind of inspiration and connection, he’s drawn to a sign at the local pool seeking a member for a male synchronised swimming team.
‘‘You need willpower, grace, rhythm and a healthy lifestyle,’’ a seemingly sceptical coach Delphine (Virginie Efira) informs him, before welcoming him to the squad.
As they struggle to coalesce, Bertrand discovers each of his team-mates is facing issues of their own.
Theirry (Philippe Katerine) is contemplating redundancy at the hands of a computer, Marcus’ (Benoit Poelvoorde) pool business is failing and ageing rocker Simon (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is still without a hit after 17 albums and is reduced to playing for old folks.
At the urging of Delphine, all of them attempt to ‘‘find their innerwoman’’, but when they ambitiously set their sights on representing France at the World Synchronised Swimming Championships, the pressure – which turned her into an alcoholic when she was competing – becomes too much for her. Fortunately, there’s a ready-made replacement coach waiting in the wings.
Delphine’s former partner Amanda (Leila Bekhti) is wheelchair-bound, but she’s a far tougher and meaner trainer – one determined to get the best out of her charges, no matter the cost.
Inspired by the story of a Swedish team that competed at the 2007 world championships (a true life tale that’s also the subject of Rob Brydon’s upcoming British comedy Swimming with Men), Sink or Swim (or The Great Bath as the French called it) is a modern spin on the now two decade-old mega hit The Full Monty.
As with Peter Cattaneo’s 1997 dramedy, this focuses on a group of down-and-out blokes whose lives are transformed via a seemingly unlikely medium.
Director Lellouche (also one of the movie’s three writers and bestknown for his roles in films like Tell No One and C’est La Vie) also borrows Cattaneo’s conceit of peppering the soundtrack with familiar tracks.
Here though, rather than mid70s staples, Lellouche fast-forwards a decade to the era of Tears for Fears, Olivia Newton John and Phil Collins, albeit to the same memorable effect.
That’s much needed because, at times, the squad’s downbeat demeanours do become a bit wearying.
However, while the synchronised swimming sometimes feels like an afterthought, Canet uses some clever waterline shots to offer a unique perspective on the water ballet, and it all builds to a hilarious, crowd-pleasing climax.
Not quite The Full Monty, but Sink or Swim is no half-baked premise either.