Vice is a biopic based on the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney. It looks at how Cheney went from a drunken, lowlife to being the President in all but name under in the George W Bush White House. It stars Christian Bale as Cheney, with the help of a lot of weight gained and a lot of make up, Amy Adams as his wife Lynne Cheney, Sam Rockwell as George W Bush and Steve Carrell as Donald Rumsfeld. It is directed by Adam McKay, who previously made The Big Short.
As an American politics nerd and particularly someone interested in the presidency of George W Bush, I went into this looking forward to seeing how it would play out. You could say I had an inherent Vice bias (ha-ha). Overall, it is a very interesting film and is particularly interesting for the style of direction. McKay uses real footage interspersed with the dramatic recreations (in a similar manner to The Big Short), which is effective and particularly when the film deals with the Iraq War, it helps remind you that the decisions people make have a direct and horrifying impact on real people. There are a number of stylistic choices, which I won’t spoil, that help make the film both funny and interesting and which I liked.
The performances are all very good. Christian Bale in particular is excellent and is completely believable as Cheney both in terms of how he looks and how he acts. The supporting cast too are all very good. One interesting character is the narrator, ‘Kurt’ played by Jesse Plemons, who is introduced to us, but we never quite know what his connection to Cheney is until the end, which works well. The only criticism I would have of this narrator is the film does rely a bit heavily on him at times to explain what is going on, which does take you out of it a bit, but not to a terrible extent.
It is impossible not to compare this film to The Big Short, as they both have a similar distinct style. I would probably say I enjoyed The Big Short more, as I didn’t know anything about those characters beforehand so I didn’t know where the story was going, but if you enjoyed The Big Short I would recommend Vice and Vice-versa.
Overall, I would recommend Vice, particularly if you have an interest in American political history. It is obviously relevant to contemporary US Politics, to which the film does make reference to. While I did enjoy it, my criticisms would be that there is a mid-credits scene, which I didn’t like as it beats you over the head with the Trump mention, which is only alluded to earlier and is not really necessary. But overall I did enjoy the film. 4 Stars.
Movie Night 