Vice
Film
Review by Kam Williams
Who
is the real Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) and how did he become the
most
powerful vice president in U.S. history? Those are the fundamental
questions explored by Vice, an alternately hilarious and sobering
biopic written and directed by Adam McKay.
McKay
won an Oscar in 2016 for his brilliant adaptation of The Big Short,
the Michael Lewis best seller chronicling the complicated series of
events leading to the stock market collapse of 2007. Nevertheless, he
probably remains better known for having previously directed a string
of sophomoric comedies starring Will Ferrell including Anchorman 1
and 2, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers and The Other Guys.
Despite
Vice's relatively-sophisticated subject matter, McKay's comedic roots
are showing here. And while all the jokes might prevent the audience
from taking the events depicted as gospel truth, the humorous asides
serve as a very welcome relief from an otherwise scary tale of blind
ambition. They also have the effect of injecting a little personality
into a guy who was basically a boring bureaucrat.
The
picture's point of departure is Cheney's wayward youth marked by
multiple arrests for driving under the influence and flunking out of
Yale University. Back home in Wyoming, he finally gets his act
together with the help of his childhood sweetheart-turned-wife, Lynne
(Amy Adams). She reads him the riot act, making it clear she's
unwilling to be married to an underachieving loser like her late
father.
Soon,
Cheney picks politics as a career path, starting out as an assistant
to Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell) in the Nixon Administration. He
held a number of other positions before becoming President Ford's
White House Chief of Staff.
He
subsequently represented Wyoming in Congress for a decade before
being appointed Secretary of Defense by President Bush 41. In 1995,
he entered the private sector to serve as CEO of Halliburton.
He
returned to government when George W. Bush wanted him as a running
mate, but only on the condition that as veep he'd be in charge of
foreign policy, intelligence briefings and numerous executive
departments. Bush 43 agrees, thus completing the unlikely evolution
of an uncharismatic political hack into a sinister Machiavellian
figure with the reins of world power at his disposal.
Credit
the chameleon-like Christian Bale for thoroughly disappearing into
his role as Cheney. More importantly, Bale plays him with just the
right combination of venom and vulnerability to humanize a
complicated character quite convincingly.
FYI,
Vice is the third film co-starring Bale and Amy Adams. They both
received Academy Award nominations for The Fighter in 2011, as well
as for American Hustle in 2014, and will undoubtedly do so again for
this equally-impressive collaboration. And you can bank on this
seriocomic satire garnering a Best Picture nomination, too.
Excellent
(4 stars)
Rated R
for profanity and violent images
Running
time: 132 minutes
Production
Companies: Plan B Entertainment / Gary Sanchez Productions /
Annapurna Pictures
Studio:
Annapurna Pictures
To
see a trailer for Vice, visit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g09a9laLh0k
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