Like most politicians, “Vice” overpromises and underdelivers in a filibusteringly long film.
The screenplay writer of Academy Award-winning “The Big Short,” Adam McKay, returns with a semi-comedic biopic about the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney. The movie tracks similarly to “The Big Short” with a narrator, in this case a war veteran, frequent flashbacks, non sequiturs, and comedic innuendo. But unlike “The Big Short” where the cut-scene explainers served a narrative purpose like dissecting complex banking practices and the contributing factors to the financial crisis, the techniques used are meant to mislead and malign.
There is also a clear effort to create a one-dimensional Dick Cheney. One method used is a film technique described by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) in “Fight Club,” where old movie reels were spliced with millisecond flashes of food or drink which would elicit a desire by audience members to go to the concession stand. As a producer of the film “Vice,” Brad Pitt seems to leverage this technique using second-long images of wildfires, demons, torture, and other nasty images — then immediately flashes back to close-ups of Cheney to create the illusion that somehow he is responsible for all the wrong that happened in the world (which is not to say he is without culpability).
As a piece of storytelling, the film resembles the lawmaking process, an absolute mess of filmmaking pork barrel. Disassembled, it has some merit.
“Vice” has funny moments. When McKay is highlighting the now-illegal practices of the Bush administration during the War on Terror, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other Bush administration officials are sitting at a fancy restaurant and the waiter offers them a menu of “Guantanamo Bay,” “Rendition,” and “Torture” – they order the full menu. At another point midway through the film, the credits roll, noting that Cheney left politics and decided to pursue a quiet life in Virginia racing Ironman triathlons — only to splice-cut out of the credits with a “just kidding.” There are many other laugh-out-loud moments.
If they had remained thematically cohesive, the film would have eclipsed “The Big Short.” However, “Vice” comes off disjointed. Both Will Ferrell and Brad Pitt are producers of the film, and their fingerprints are evident. Though rather than blending their talents, “Vice” just juxtaposes ideas. A funny Shakespearean soliloquy scene reminiscent of the more clever moments in “The Big Short” segments directly into dramatic, prolonged scenes of Cheney sighing or fly-fishing. With a directing proclivity towards the erratic and clever, the film comes across unfocused.
The acting exceeds the storytelling. For what Christian Bale is tasked to do as Cheney, he does very well, and the artists responsible for his transformation deserve an Oscar nod. Amy Adams plays Lynne Cheney similar to how I imagine Hillary Clinton acts, which is to say she correctly mirrors what I’d expect a D.C. insider to act like. Steve Carell portrays Donald Rumsfeld like Michael Scott got loose in Washington. Sam Rockwell phones in a performance of former President George W. Bush somewhere between Will Ferrell’s hour-long Bush comedy special and the more serious Josh Brolin portrayal from “W.” It’s quite unflattering all around to their real-life counterparts.
For the #Resistance types, “Vice” checks the boxes. Nearly all of Hollywood’s conservative villains make cameos: the Koch Brothers, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Roger Ailes, Halliburton, and even Donald Trump. The framing of Cheney is through a very left-wing lens. Without dialogue, the images alone would make you believe that Cheney is responsible for the financial crisis, global warming, terrorism, the Islamic State, school shootings, and forest fires.
The political world of D.C. is haphazard, chaotic, and devious. Likewise, the players in our political arena often resemble this type of brokenness and vice. As Cheney breaks the fourth wall in the third act of the film, he proffers that maybe it’s a brokenness in ourselves that votes for and rewards Washington insiders that do things we find repugnant. As history turns and repeats itself, perhaps he’s right.
Tyler Grant (@The_Tyler_Grant) is a Young Voices contributor, who completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Taiwan. He writes movie reviews for the Washington Examiner.
