VICE
Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Justin Kirk. Alison Pill
Here’s a biopic, on the other hand, that few were hungering to see: who can even think about George W. Bush’s quietly vicious vice- president Dick Cheney these days, with so many other present- day political villains to concern ourselves with? The good news is that Adam McKay’s film doesn’t hold back on the criticism: like his Oscar- winning The Big Short, this is a work of liberally angry, clattering satire, tracing Cheney’s corrupt legacy from the mid- 1960s onwards. The disappointment is that he’s both over and under- cooked it: beneath the messy sound and fury, there’s little fresh political insight, and the execution feels sluggish, tricked out with too many smarmy gimmicks. Bale’s impersonation, under a metric ton of prosthetics, is canny enough, but Cheney remains as hard to pin down as ever. 25 January