Vice
Director: adam McKay

Adam McKay’s new film is nominally a biopic of former United States Vice President Dick Cheney – but really, it’s a study in the arrogation of power. Christian Bale (inset) does a scarily good impersonation of the man, prosthetic jowls, side-of-the-mouth growl, huge weight gain and all, and may well carry the day come awards season.

It plots a zigzagging course from Cheney’s drunken, delinquent youth in 1963 Wyoming to his 1970s as a political wheeler-dealer and lackey of Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), his only rival here for cynicism; and finally his ascent to vice president in the Bush administration, when his bland satanic majesty came into its own. And yet the conundrum of how this uncharismatic, unscrupulous man rose to the top offers no solution, other than to say – people let it happen.

Vice is a brash, energetic satire, not long on subtlety. As he did in his comedy about the 2008 financial meltdown, The Big Short, McKay peps up his narrative with freeze frames, fourth-wall breaks and straight-to-camera addresses. He admits this technique is designed to catch the attention of people who don’t engage with serious subjects – money, politics – which is quite a dangerous game to play. (You might end up alienating everyone.) The recurrence of an unnamed narrator figure (Jesse Plemons) does have a pay-off, though that doesn’t stop it from seeming a gimmick.