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Bale is sight to behold in exhausting ‘Vice’
‘Vice’
Opens: Tuesday
Starring: Christian Bale (above), Amy Adams
Rating: R for language and some violent images
Running time: 2:12 Grade: Two and a half stars out of four.
AP National Writer
Blow your nose, and you’ll miss the split-second shot of a younger Donald Trump in “Vice,” Adam McKay’s exhaustingly entertaining (and entertainingly exhausting) Dick Cheney movie.
But make no mistake: the filmmaker wants us to be thinking about Trump. What he’s telling us – implicitly, then more obviously – is that if you’re upset today about what you might see as, say, a brazen executive-branch power grab, well, that already happened – and pretty recently. It’s just that we didn’t really notice because, McKay argues, Dick Cheney did it so darned quietly.
Let’s pause a moment to note the obvious: “Vice,” which features a terrifically committed performance by Christian Bale, is not a neutral biopic in any sense. It’s more of a political lecture on steroids, using every clever filmmaking device up the talented McKay’s sleeve, much like “The Big Short,” his journey through the 2008 financial collapse.
These devices include broken fourth walls, surreal vignettes, fun celebrity cameos, a mysterious narrator, and – best of all – Dick and Lynne Cheney in the bedroom, plotting his next political move, suddenly launching into iambic pentameter for several minutes. Macbeth much?
The parallels with the Scottish play are obvious: McKay presents Lynne (Amy Adams, memorable as always) as the ideological force behind the man, her husband’s private coach in every step he takes on the way to becoming a virtual co-president and perhaps the most powerful man on the planet.
But while Macbeth becomes wracked with guilt and paranoia, “Vice” chronicles a man with no guilt or doubt whatsoever, and that matter-of-fact certainty of purpose was indeed one of the reasons he was able to climb so fast, McKay argues: He simply saw opportunities and took them.
The weakness here, though, is that we never get a sense of what truly drives Cheney the man. The shiny bells and whistles that McKay employs – because, well, he’s good at it – detract from our ability to get to know his subject. Is McKay’s Cheney merely an opportunist, or is he fueled by a deeper purpose, and how? It’s not totally clear.
Although Cheney fans will likely not find much to appreciate here, that doesn’t mean you need be a committed liberal to enjoy “Vice.” You can simply be an admirer of committed acting, the sort that Bale specializes in.
Yes, the actor famously gained a lot of weight, and mastered that way Cheney speaks from the side of his mouth. (There’s also amazing makeup work here.) Alone, these would be gimmicks, but Bale also disappears so deeply into his balding, portly, pasty character that for long minutes you forget it’s him.
As for Adams, her Lynne is bright, witty and gritty, a woman one imagines might have become a top politician herself had she been born a few decades later. Sam Rockwell has less screen time, but delivers a hilarious impression of George W. Bush, all folksy and jokesy. Is it fair to portray Bush as such a man-child, motivated by pleasing his father, and so uninvolved in decisions? Perhaps not, but Rockwell is sure entertaining.
“Vice” is frenetic and fun, flippant and frustrating. Is it, um, factual? Well, McKay has based his research on some important books by journalists such as Ron Suskind, Barton Gellman and Jane Mayer. But he also surely injects plenty of his own analysis, and unless you’re an expert, you may not know where the hypothesizing begins.
The best advice? Come for the politics, but stay for the performances. They’ll make it worth your while.