Unchecked anger may be toxic, but anger and more specifically exasperated indignation weaponized by a comedian can be such a gleefully lacerating weapon. Such is the razor-sharp instrument of choice that writer/director Adam McKay employs in “Vice,” his incendiary, hilarious and blistering examination and indictment of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who served under President George W. Bush in the 2000s. In McKay’s follow-up to Academy-Award nominated “The Big Short,” which purposely places the Veep at an unknowable distance, the director uses a similar unconventional approach and tactics: big performances, wicked satire, 4th-wall-breaking techniques, cheeky, paroxysmal editing (ace work by Hank Corwin), and a deep irreverence for the tropes of biopics which he puts cheerfully grinds through a shredder.
McKay may be outraged, but he never loses his riotously funny sense of biting, acidic humor and the two forces are deadly and wild. The director’s remit of the last several years remains unchanged: how does one tell a complex, dense story that Americans normally find boring af and make it howlingly entertaining? McKay succeeds, with a kitchen-sink approach of maximalist, potentially divisive tendencies. It’s certainly not a subtle film, but it’s far more successful and less spastic and incoherent then “The Big Short,” which took a similar approach of accessibly distilling dense information into a kinetic, would-be enjoyable package (“The Big Short” attempting to explain in layman’s terms how America was robbed blind during the housing crisis). “Vice” is similarly overstuffed and dense, but roguishly amusing and building towards a bigger declaration and portrait of both rising mediocrity and soullessness. For an entire career, McKay has been examining and exploring stupidity in all its form; he’s a Ph.D. scholar in the inane, yours, his, ours, everyone’s, but here, the examination of idiocy and obliviousness has a darker purpose.
“Vice” ping-pongs through the life of Cheney (played by an inimitable Christian Bale, outstanding), starting early on with his life as a ne’er-do-well and failed Yale student, expelled for excessive debauchery, but also flipping like a A.D.D. channel to the bunker moments following 9/11 when President Bush (Sam Rockwell) is in the air and Cheney is directing the situation room much to the side-eyed alarm of folks like Condoleezza Rice (LisaGay Hamilton) and Colin Powell (Tyler Perry).
McKay creates an (imagined?) defining moment early on when wife Lynne Cheney (an always terrific Amy Adams), threatens to leave him and Dick makes the declarative statement of never disappointing her again (he doesn’t, at least not in this movie). From there, the movie navigates through his appointment as Donald Rumsfeld’s lackey (a superb Steve Carell, typifying McKay’s sense of sardonically-laced comedy) and snaking its way through the greatest hits moments and highlights of Cheney’s life as told by a mystery narrator and family man (Jesse Plemons) who doesn’t reveal how he and the VP are “related” until closer until the third act.
As “Vice” evolves, so does Cheney; the picture depicting him as a naïve man who at one point asks Rumsfeld, “What do we actually believe in?” (which elicits uproarious laughter from the character and audience in response), to a savvy, canny fast-learner who soon understands and becomes intoxicated by the allure of power, eventually becoming something more subhuman. McKay posits that Cheney became dangerous and the true architect of an insidious shadow empire within the White House.
Performances and casting choices across the board are phenomenal; all the actors understanding the razor-thin line they are pirouetting on, Sam Rockwell, particularly delicious as the affable, charming idiot Bush. Alison Pill as Mary Cheney, Justin Kirk as Scooter Libby and Bill Camp as Gerald Ford are also quite good and this movie should be an unbeatable force in an ensemble awards prizes.
“Vice” is viciously funny sometimes, with McKay really going for broke—one “re-imagined” sequence is told in Shakespearean verse, another flippant maneuver sidesplittingly ends the movie early with credits rolling and everything, plus the running heart attack gag is hysterical. McKay’s movie is bold and impertinent and perhaps won’t be for audiences that want a film to play by the rules, but his chutzpah and ambition is something to behold.
Director of Photography Greig Fraser (“Rogue One,” “Zero Dark Thirty“), is a far superior choice than “The Big Short’s” Barry Ackroyd who went too far with the ‘Bourne‘-like approach to docudrama comedy and composer Nicholas Britell’s (“Moonlight“) score seems to give subtle homage nods to the mordant patriotism method Terrence Blanchard often applies to Spike Lee films.
“Vice” grows darker and more frightening as it comes to its conclusion, McKay illustrating Cheney’s abuses of power and efforts to undermine the rule of law in our democracy (sound familiar?) and making the case for the VP as war criminal. But unlike Trump, McKay seems to have respect for his enemy and once, he’s grown into his own, never treats him like a buffoon, even occasionally offering him moments of dignified empathy, such as the critical moments when he sides with his daughter, a lesbian who will turn into a political liability.
The way McKay echoes today is evoking our feelings for Trump and his goons now— a scary, sad, pathetic, maddening & hilarious bunch—and “Vice” embodies that complex emotional response to madmen in control.
Even before his ‘Big Short,’ metamorphosis into “dramatic” filmmaker, McKay’s been warning America as a nation to pay attention to political and corporate interest and not keep our head in the sand, albeit through comedy—“Anchorman 2”and “The Other Guys,” excoriating the evils of cable news and big money, respectively.
McKay’s savaging blow here, a kind of summating statement is our gullible, connivance, even unintended collusion in all of this vile corruption. Ultimately, no one is off the hook in “Vice.” It’s clear McKay will continue to rage against the machine in all its forms over the next few years, but the underlying knockout blow here is the idea that nothing here will ever change, ever improve, if we keep insisting on burying our head in the sand. [B+]