Adam McKay is a clever writer and director, but his penchant for elaborate winks and nods reaches an exhausting point in Vice, a strange and often tongue-in-cheek portrait of former Vice President Dick Cheney (played by a frightening Christian Bale). After several humorous collaborations with Will Ferrell, McKay took the Oscar world by surprise in 2015 with The Big Short, an equally irreverent look at the housing market crash of 2008 and the men who got rich off America's downfall. Here was a film that took complicated, incredibly specific financial information and made it palatable for general audiences, either through exposition dumps or amusing cutaways (where Margot Robbie in a bubble bath or the late Anthony Bourdain in a kitchen explained some difficult concepts). Its surprising levity worked like a charm, only for the film to kick viewers in the gut by the time the credits rolled.
McKay utilizes many of the same narrative devices in Vice, yet they all feel shockingly unnecessary to the story at hand. Some of his comic experiments work quite well- a fake-out ending at the film's mid-point garnered a solid laugh from me. But instead of altering his approach as he transitions from the world of financial malfeasance to political chicanery, McKay maintains his love of over-explanation and informational spoon-feeding, which reveals a somewhat disappointing lack of trust in his audience. Suffocated by voiceover by Jesse Plemons (playing a mysterious character who only becomes apparent after a third act twist), everything in Vice is subject to ten layers of didactic emphasis, just to make sure we always get what's happening.
I can take the message-heavy sermonizing, but the way the film's preachy attempts at insight create a sense of dramatic futility makes it all feel like a significant fumble. And while the narrative contains some surprises, it's too scattered to ever pick up too much steam. Dick Cheney is first introduced as an aimless young man in Wyoming, drinking his life away in a series of dead-end jobs. With a push from future wife Lynne (Amy Adams), Dick picks himself up by his bootstraps and gets things done. He begins a career in politics, works under Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), and slowly creeps his way into a position of power in Washington, D.C. Years later, he becomes an unusually powerful VP to the rather dim George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell), kick-starting an illegal war and accumulating extreme influence on the global stage.
But why?
Vice's greatest failure is its inability to treat any of its characters like real, flesh-and-blood people. I'm not saying we have any reason to sympathize with powerful bureaucrats, but there's a distinct and undeniably crucial lack of depth here, which is unfortunately a necessity if you wish to tell a complex and nuance true story. I'm not expecting McKay to balance things out at all, but there's no real attempt at diverging from the core message at all. Instead, McKay goes for hyperbolic gestures, including a lengthy close-up on Cheney's black heart and an out-of-the-blue monologue from the former VP about how he supposedly did what he needed to do (a notion that seems to be in complete disagreement with everything else in the movie). This basic lack of dimensional analysis makes the whole thing something of a chore to watch, even trickling down to the carefully mannered performances. No amount of transformative charisma from Bale can somehow make such a thinly written central character interesting.
Yet for all its missteps, Vice is a moderately entertaining folly. It is by far the most ridiculous film you'll see this Oscar season, so high on its own supply of sarcastic BS that it's hard not to stick with McKay's wild ride. Some of the scenes feel eerie and effective in a cold, heartless way- the firing of Rumsfeld, the strange glimpses at Cheney's past, and so on. But Vice is also a long and generally pointless endeavor, shedding no new light on why any of this went down the way that it did. McKay aims for that same gut punch he achieved in The Big Short, but this time around, it's well short of a knockout.
THE FINAL GRADE: C+ (5.7/10)
McKay utilizes many of the same narrative devices in Vice, yet they all feel shockingly unnecessary to the story at hand. Some of his comic experiments work quite well- a fake-out ending at the film's mid-point garnered a solid laugh from me. But instead of altering his approach as he transitions from the world of financial malfeasance to political chicanery, McKay maintains his love of over-explanation and informational spoon-feeding, which reveals a somewhat disappointing lack of trust in his audience. Suffocated by voiceover by Jesse Plemons (playing a mysterious character who only becomes apparent after a third act twist), everything in Vice is subject to ten layers of didactic emphasis, just to make sure we always get what's happening.
I can take the message-heavy sermonizing, but the way the film's preachy attempts at insight create a sense of dramatic futility makes it all feel like a significant fumble. And while the narrative contains some surprises, it's too scattered to ever pick up too much steam. Dick Cheney is first introduced as an aimless young man in Wyoming, drinking his life away in a series of dead-end jobs. With a push from future wife Lynne (Amy Adams), Dick picks himself up by his bootstraps and gets things done. He begins a career in politics, works under Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), and slowly creeps his way into a position of power in Washington, D.C. Years later, he becomes an unusually powerful VP to the rather dim George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell), kick-starting an illegal war and accumulating extreme influence on the global stage.
But why?
Vice's greatest failure is its inability to treat any of its characters like real, flesh-and-blood people. I'm not saying we have any reason to sympathize with powerful bureaucrats, but there's a distinct and undeniably crucial lack of depth here, which is unfortunately a necessity if you wish to tell a complex and nuance true story. I'm not expecting McKay to balance things out at all, but there's no real attempt at diverging from the core message at all. Instead, McKay goes for hyperbolic gestures, including a lengthy close-up on Cheney's black heart and an out-of-the-blue monologue from the former VP about how he supposedly did what he needed to do (a notion that seems to be in complete disagreement with everything else in the movie). This basic lack of dimensional analysis makes the whole thing something of a chore to watch, even trickling down to the carefully mannered performances. No amount of transformative charisma from Bale can somehow make such a thinly written central character interesting.
Yet for all its missteps, Vice is a moderately entertaining folly. It is by far the most ridiculous film you'll see this Oscar season, so high on its own supply of sarcastic BS that it's hard not to stick with McKay's wild ride. Some of the scenes feel eerie and effective in a cold, heartless way- the firing of Rumsfeld, the strange glimpses at Cheney's past, and so on. But Vice is also a long and generally pointless endeavor, shedding no new light on why any of this went down the way that it did. McKay aims for that same gut punch he achieved in The Big Short, but this time around, it's well short of a knockout.
THE FINAL GRADE: C+ (5.7/10)
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