Vice

Giv­en the cur­rent state of pol­i­tics both domes­tic and transat­lantic, it makes sense that Adam McK­ay is look­ing for answers. It’s human nature to try to find order out of chaos, and as a species, we like it when things are easy. We like neat con­clu­sions and lin­ear tra­jec­to­ries, we like heroes and villains.

The prob­lem is, life – and indeed human­i­ty – is nev­er usu­al­ly that eas­i­ly defined; we exist in shades of grey, shift­ing and chang­ing in the light. Nev­er­the­less, it’s eas­i­er to make a film about pol­i­tics if you can jab your fin­ger accus­ing­ly at one man, hold him up by the scruff of his neck and say, ​“This is him, fel­las! He dun­nit!” Enter Dick Cheney.

McKay’s offi­cial Mas­ter of Pup­pets, Dick served as George W Bush’s Vice Pres­i­dent for the dura­tion of his pres­i­den­cy. Pri­or to that, he was CEO of oil con­glom­er­ate Hal­libur­ton, and held promi­nent White House staff roles dur­ing the Bush Sr and Ford admin­is­tra­tions. In McKay’s inter­pre­ta­tion of events, Dick’s a Mid­west par­ty boy who cleans up his act after fiancé́ Lynne (Amy Adams) threat­ens to leave him.

Reunit­ing with The Big Short gold­en boy Chris­t­ian Bale, McK­ay sticks to the blue­print that saw him win a Best Adapt­ed Screen­play Oscar in 2016. He scathing­ly rep­ri­mands Cheney for just about every­thing he ever did, and posi­tions him as the sole cause of every mal­a­dy the world has faced since his time in Wash­ing­ton, from ISIS to Trump. For McK­ay, all roads lead back to Cheney, who con­trolled every aspect of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and know­ing­ly start­ed two ille­gal wars just to make a lit­tle money.

That’s a lot of cred­it to bestow on one sin­gle indi­vid­ual, but in McKay’s nar­ra­tive, there’s only room for one vil­lain. Cheney is cer­tain­ly that – smirk­ing, schem­ing, moti­vat­ed seem­ing­ly only by greed, he’s one white cat away from being a straight-up Bond parody.

One-time Amer­i­can Psy­cho and bonafide cin­e­mat­ic chameleon Bale is an excel­lent cast­ing choice, and infi­nite­ly watch­able – he has Cheney’s man­ner­isms down, and his unnerv­ing unknow­able nature con­trasts with Steve Carell as Don­ald ​“Rum­my” Rums­feld and Sam Rock­well as George ​“Dum­my” Dubya, which feel more like car­i­ca­tures (Carell is actu­al­ly recy­cling his role from anoth­er McK­ay out­ing, Anchorman).

There’s nev­er a sense that Dick doesn’t know exact­ly what he’s doing at all times, which makes him ter­ri­fy­ing – but writ­ing off the oth­er men in pow­er as imbe­ciles cre­ates a strange sense of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty. Always-a-plea­sure Jesse Ple­mons serves as the film’s nar­ra­tor, but his character’s con­nec­tion to Cheney is so ten­u­ous, so baf­fling, and arrives so late in the game, it near­ly derails the whole film.

It’s iron­ic that McK­ay takes aim at InfoWars, giv­en that Vice feels more like a smug expres­sion of a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry than a sharp polit­i­cal com­men­tary. Every­thing in the film is pre­sent­ed as ​‘the facts’ (a title card and fake cred­its scene dri­ve this mes­sage home), and per­haps life would be eas­i­er if one man was to blame for the glob­al mess we find our­selves in, but that’s a Get Out of Jail Free card for every­one who isn’t Dick Cheney. Peo­ple, and pol­i­tics, are so much more com­plex than that.