Vice

I both loved and hated this movie. My feelings towards it and about the ways in which it tackles its various subjects has not settled with time. Vice is a political hit job, a takedown of American media, and an indictment of political dynasties throwing us into never-ending conflicts and quagmires over petty squabbles and unchecked greed.

That’s a lot for any movie to take on, and much like The Big Short before it, Vice has a severe tone problem. This type of subject matter is typically presented with grim seriousness and color drained cinematography. There’s lots of hushed speaking in hallways and clandestine meetings in cramped rooms. Vice has all of that, but the volume is turned all the way up.

Is this a satire or a straight-faced look at one of the more disturbing political figures of the past 50 years? Yes, it’s both at the same time. It’s also neither as this ever-shifting tone has a strange canceling effect on everything it presents.

There’s a lack of momentum to anything presented here. Dick Cheney goes from drunken shitkicker to political novice after a stern talking to from his wife, Lynne. Then he ingratiates himself with Donald Rumsfield and we’re presented a slideshow of his life and potential crimes, including the invasion of Iraq, torture, and the Valerie Plame scandal. Yet this film’s argument that his betrayal of his gay daughter, Mary, was the moment he lost his soul feels limp. If he’s willing to do what he did as an uncommonly powerful vice-president, then it stands to reasons that he’d cast his family aside if the political math demanded it.

It’s hard to care about Cheney as a character, so it’s in this film’s favor that it never asks us to like or care about him. Yet again, there’s that strangely negating effect at play. If we’re not supposed to care about his controlling, manipulative figurehead, then why are we watching a 132-minute grab-bag about his life and career? I suppose the guffaws and laughs from the already converted is reason enough for writer/director Adam McKay.

Much like The Big Short, Vice also presents a false ending before continuing with the story proper and surrealistic touches. This time though, Vice presents this false ending towards the middle of the film as Cheney mulls over the decision to leave the private sector and return to the political one. This glimpse of Cheney’s life if he kept out of politics is both hilarious, for obvious reasons, and depressing for everything that follows.

This negating effect trickles down into the performances as well. Amy Adams comes roaring out in the earliest parts of the film as a Lady Macbeth in waiting, but one that’ll never have the “out damn spot” breakdown. Her machinations are disturbing and fascinating, and then the film jettisons her in the back half and Adams is regulated to “the wife” role that the earliest parts sidestepped. A similar thing happens with Steve Carrell’s Donald Rumsfeld and Sam Rockwell’s George W. Bush – they’re grotesques and caricatures without any real cores. They’re too broadly drawn. Bush, in particular, is a clueless boob with daddy issues here. A popular idea, sure, but there’s a lack of curiosity to explore where it came from, why, and what basis it has in reality.

The same lack of intellectual curiosity and happy stereotyping dips into Cheney. Christian Bale is clearly trying to form a portrait of a man enamored with power to the point where it becomes his narcotic of choice, while McKay sees a cartoonish figure of villainy. These two ideas can coexist side-by-side, but McKay is working on one track while Bale is working on another. They rarely, if ever, are operating on the same one.

This lack of intellectual curiosity comes to a groaning climax when the identity of Jesse Plemons’ narrator is revealed. Throughout the film he’s been used as a device to word vomit more factoids that McKay couldn’t work into the mouths of others. Was this choice supposed to be satire? It’s not funny, it’s eye roll inducing. Just because you can scattershot your bile against numerous political targets that deserve it, this doesn’t mean you’ve crafted something smart to say or observe about them.

Vice is Adam McKay’s political rant. I happen to agree with him, but I also think audiences are smarter than this.