For pure entertainment value, Vice is one of the half-dozen best movies of 2018. It’s funny, fast-paced, and packed with good performances from great actors, some of whom are disguised sufficiently to make you spend a good chunk of the movie asking yourself, “where do I know them from?” It’s also a movie that I think has the potential to sway a lot of viewers who remain ambivalent about the legacy of the Bush/Cheney administration, or simply prefer not to think about it, since so much of what the movie shows did in fact happen, and the consequences of that administration’s policies have been disastrous in so many spheres of modern life around the world.
That doesn’t make it a good movie, however, and Vice is, in fact, not a good movie. Vice is a farce masquerading as a satire; it is a polemic masquerading as political commentary. It is as subtle as a sledgehammer to the forehead. Its quick pace may be a feature rather than a bug, but it makes the movie feel unfocused and superficial, aided in the former by writer-director Adam McKay’s decision to jump back and forth in time between scenes from 9/11 and Cheney’s early years in Wyoming. (There is one truly brilliant part of this, however, around the 43 minute mark, that I won’t spoil, but it is one of the funniest bits in the movie.) There is so much for the viewer to unpack in this movie, but McKay barely gives us time to open the boxes, let alone sort through their contents, and this becomes most problematic of all if you take a moment – probably after the film ends, because you barely have any time during the movie to think – to ponder Dick Cheney’s motivations for just about anything he did in life. Vice has no answers for us.
Cheney, for the handful of you who might not know much of his history, started his political career as an intern in Congress, hitched his wagon to Donald Rumsfeld’s, and moved into the executive branch, eventually becoming Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford at age 34. When Jimmy Carter defeated Ford in 1976, Cheney changed direction, running for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat and winning in 1978, holding the seat for a decade before becoming Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush. After an interlude as CEO of Halliburton during the Clinton years, Cheney returned to public office as George W. Bush’s running mate, becoming Vice President for eight years, during which he pursued unprecedented power for the executive branch as a whole and himself in particular, power that led the United States into the fiasco that was the war in Iraq, warrant-less surveillance, widespread torture of so-called “enemy combatants,” and more.
Vice focuses on how Cheney got to that point in his career, and what he did with the power he obtained. Cheney, played by Welsh actor Christian Bale, is first seen as a drunken screw-up who is lifted out of his own mess by his wife Lynne (Amy Adams, doing Amy Adams things). Lynne is ambitious but held back by the misogynistic political culture of the 1960s, so she wants her husband to succeed and ascend as her proxy, and throughout the film she is by his side at nearly every moment, and when she’s not, she’s there in spirit pushing him on. Cheney’s ambition may be organic, but it seems more like his wife’s making in this retelling.
That leads, after a lot of prologue, to the pivotal scene shown in the trailer, where he negotiates with then-candidate George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell, doing a spot-on impersonation) to take on the VP role but to redefine it to gain control over a wide swath of the executive branch, including defense and energy. Bush accedes, and Cheney, aided by his attorney David Addington (Don McManus) and aide Scooter Libby (Justin Kirk), sets out to consolidate power under a philosophy called the Unitary Executive Theory that sounds a lot like the divine right of kings – if the President does it, it must be legal. (I can think of one President who would very much like this philosophy to be valid right now.) This leads to the war in Iraq, which this film presents as both a question of settling a score from Operation Desert Storm and a way to enrich Cheney as well as his friends at Halliburton and Big Oil, at a cost of maybe 750,000 lives.
McKay seems so excited to tell this story that he can barely get the words out of the characters’ mouths fast enough before each scene change, never letting the material breathe or, as a result, letting the audience consider what Cheney’s motives might be. Instead, the film dazzles us with quick cuts, loud bangs, and some incredible impersonations and likenesses. Steve Carell does some very fine work as Donald Rumsfeld, and Eddie Marsan (Mr. Norrell!) does that same as his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Lisa Gay Hamilton gets Condoleeza Rice just right.
The film is also stuffed with gimmicks, with the 43-minute one the funniest, but leans way too heavily on this kind of bombast to work as a coherent film. The Alfred Molina and Jesse Plemons gambits are both interesting on their own, but do not work in the context of the movie. In fact, the Molina scene might be the movie’s best sequence, but does not fit in the broader narrative; it feels more like a brilliant sketch from a comedy show that understands the power of brevity. The scene where Dick and Lynne Cheney begin speaking to each other in Shakespearean dialogue – I thought it might be from one of the two Richard tragedies, given Cheney’s name, but it’s not – doesn’t work in the least. McKay is trying to tell a story, but fantasy sequences in a movie that otherwise strives for realism, such as with costume and makeup, only work against the broader purpose.
There’s also material in here that is pretty questionable. The script very strongly implies that Lynne Cheney’s father murdered her mother, which doesn’t seem to be confirmed or even seriously suspected. The first Iraq War is barely mentioned at all, even though explaining the second one almost certainly requires it – especially the neoconservative faction who supported the second invasion without Cheney’s financial ties to companies that would benefit. The script frequently implies that losing a Cabinet-level position is a massive career setback, even though such people could waltz into six-figure speaking fees or lucrative jobs on television or as lobbyists or at think tanks. But no inaccuracy is as glaring as the film’s stark implication that the Bush Administration invaded Iraq in 2003 because the American public wanted them to do so. Yes, tensions were still high after 9/11, and people did indeed want someone to bomb – which we did, with results that are complicated, in Afghanistan. The idea that Cheney and his focus groups (including the feckless Frank Luntz, who gets lampooned appropriately as a soulless pollster) helped market the war to maximize support, which then justified the war itself, is not just inaccurate, but distasteful. The on-screen text at the end of the movie says that over 600,000 Iraqis died as a result of our invasion. Don’t put that on the American people, even if they did want the invasion. That’s on Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, and even Colin Powell – who weirdly gets a pass here – and everyone other cheerleader in Washington who signed off on the effort.
Bale won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for his portrayal of Cheney, a hard to believe transformation if you saw his appearance and heard his voice at the awards, and he’s worthy of at least a nomination for the Oscar for the same. Adams should get a nod for Best Supporting Actress, and I could see Rockwell or Carell getting a node for Best Supporting Actor, although I could probably rattle off five more deserving names (Ali, Driver, Chalamet, Grant, Elliott, Kaluuya, Jordan … that’s seven). I thought Allison Pill was excellent in a smaller role as Mary Cheney, Dick and Lynne’s daughter who comes out as a teenager and serves as a plot point throughout the movie. And Vice seems at least even money to get a Best Picture nod, even though it’s not in my top ten or, in my opinion, worthy of the nomination.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t see it; Vice is a complicated movie to discuss, as the length of this review probably shows. There’s a lot to recommend about it, from the many jokes and gags that do land, to the serious and important point it makes about the dangers of concentrating power in too few hands. The script mentions climate change in passing maybe twice, in part to say that Cheney backburnered any talk of doing something about it at the federal level, and then shows a scene of people golfing in front of a massive forest fire at the end. That’s a big deal, and worthy of exploration, but that barely gets two minutes out of the film. You’ll leave angry, but if you leave understanding anything more about the man at the heart of the story, you’ve gotten more out of Vice than I did.
I’ll probably check it out at some point, but I find both Bale and Adams tiresome with (as you seem to allude to in re Adams) all of their ACK-TING.
I currently have this #7 on my list, though I expect it to drop. My enjoyment/appreciation of the film probably has as much to do with the fact that it reminded me of how much contempt I still hold for the Bush Administration (which had receded thanks to the current administration and most of the Congressional GOP).
I agree that the film does feel rushed and unfocused. I feel that perhaps they tried to cover too much information in the running time they allotted themselves. Of course, I’m not sure what they could have cut, other than the Shakespeare scene. I thought that maybe the dialogue was from Macbeth, as I was getting a very Lady Macbeth-ish vibe from Adams’ portrayal of Lynne more than a few times. Case in point: watching Nixon’s resignation announcement, the takeaway for her daughters is not, “Don’t do that,” but “People will always try to take away power if you have it.” You’d have thought Dick would say that. I also think the whole Jesse Plemons character was there because the character narration worked in The Big Short, and because it provided an excuse to show how the hell Cheney is still alive. I mean, weren’t the heart attack scenes awfully funny black comedy?
But I did laugh probably more than I should have at this film. The 43 minute mark had me laughing so hard that I’m pretty sure a few people started looking at me. I also enjoyed the shots at people like Rumsfeld, Rice and especially Scalia, until I had to remind myself that none of these people have ever truly had to face the consequences of their actions in any meaningful way. I feel like the film ultimately wasn’t subtle because McKay was choosing to remind people of just how horrible Cheney was, lest we’ve all forgotten. Which is exactly what I think McKay was saying, especially in the mid-credits scene: that there’s so much out there to distract us, that we’re all working longer for less, that we can’t pay full attention to what the power brokers actually do. I also had a different interpretation of those focus group scenes. I always felt like they were determined to attack Iraq, and the focus groups were meant to represent how easy it was for the public to accept the Iraq invasion.
In some ways, my biggest takeaway from the film was McKay’s implication that of all the bad things Cheney did, the betrayal of his daughter was the worst. And frankly I am beyond curious to know what that relationship is like today, as I couldn’t find anything that comes after the quote used in the epilogue.
As for the film’s Oscar chances, I feel it will get nominations for Picture, Actor and Supporting Actress (with Adams well on her way to that “lifetime achievement” Honorary Oscar they give to people who just never win one competitively, like Glenn Close is bound for when she doesn’t win again this year). I don’t think Rockwell’s role was big enough to warrant a nomination (not that that would matter to the Academy) and I think all the actors you mentioned are more deserving than either Rockwell or Carell anyway. I wouldn’t mind Bale winning at all, if only because it would rile people like Liz Cheney again.
So, yea, my admiration for the film is probably driven by my contempt for Cheney personally, but I feel like he’s deserving of how he was depicted.
It appears that the bigger rift now is between Mary and Liz; Dick Cheney has come out a few times post-2008 in support of marriage equality and just generally supportive of Mary, while avoiding outright criticism of Liz. (That’s not to defend him; he raised a bigoted daughter, which is quite the achievement with Liz’s sister being gay.
My most damning indictment of the Trump presidency is that it made me feel nostalgic for the Bush Administration.
I agree the balance of the film was wrong – for me it took too long to get to the Iraq war and then the time between then and Obama appearing seemed to just evaporate.
There was an awful lot that was skipped over – it was weird to reference the Valerie Plame affair but not the conclusion that ultimately Scooter Libby went to jail for it.
I didn’t necessarily take the “stark implication that the Bush Administration invaded Iraq in 2003 because the American public wanted them to do so” – my view of the film was that Cheney etc. were willing to do whatever they needed to gain public support and so backed into the strategy of attacking a country because that came out of the focus groups. I didn’t take that as an indictment of the public, more of the lack of an ideology of Cheney who would do whatever it took to gain and consolidate power.