Vice

Vice (2018)

Starring Christian Bale and Amy Adams
Directed by Adam McKay

The office of Vice President is "not worth a bucket of warm piss."
- John Nance Garner
32nd Vice President of the United States, 1933 - 1941

Vice (noun)
- An immoral or evil habit or practice.
- Immoral conduct; depraved or degrading behaviour: a life of vice.
- A fault, defect or shortcoming.

There is obviously a dual meaning of the title Vice.  Ostensibly it's so-called because it broadly depicts the life and latter political career of Dick Cheney, Vice President to George W Bush, and arguably, through skillful manouevering, the most powerful VP in United States history.  But it also implies corruption, dishonesty, and wrongdoing.  Make of that what you will. The film plays its Get-out-of-Jail-Free card right from the outset, stating that although it will attempt to depict the life and career of its subject, ultimately, nobody really knows who Dick Cheney is.

Having briefly shown a 21 year old  Cheney getting pulled over for drunk driving, the scene is set in the White House Operations room on September 11th 2001; amidst the chaos Cheney gives authorization to the military to shoot down any aircraft deemed to be a threat, and apparently does so with the President's authority. Flashing back in time we see Cheney arguing with his classy wife Lynne (Amy Adams) having been kicked out of Yale for repeated drunkenness.  Naturally, to get his life back on track, Cheney chooses Politics, that most honourable of professions, and enrolls as a Congressional intern, where he ends up working for the abrasive Donald Rumsfeld (a note perfect Steve Carell) purely because he likes the address just given to the interns, rather than from any discernibly ideological preference.  And so his climb begins.  After the Watergate scandal brings down the Nixon administration, Rumsfeld is recalled from exile as Ambassador in Brussels to become Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford; Cheney becomes Chief of Staff.  When Jimmy Carter becomes President in 1977 Dick is out of Government, but becomes Congressman for Wyoming in the House of Representatives, despite suffering a heat attack mid-campaign.  Amongst his "achievements" in the post, to which he was re-elected five times, was the repeal of the doctrine requiring the media give both sides of a story, leading to the wildly ideological and biased news outlets such as Fox News, which we know and love today. 

Having later served as Secretary of Defense for George H W Bush, Cheney again finds himself out of a job when Bill Clinton becomes President.  He takes the role of Chief Executive Officer with the multinational oil and energy behemoth Halliburton.  But the lure of office is never far away.  When George W Bush, once the drunken, wayward black sheep of the Bush family asks Cheney to be his running mate, he initially demurs but eventually agrees.  9/11 happens - this is where we came in.  The film attempts, for the most part successfully, to unpack the Gordian knot of the the Afghanistan / Iraq  wars and the ongoing strife in the Middle East into a coherent narrative. Al-Qaeda is identified and (partially) neutralized, but the Government, led by Rumsfeld and Cheney are determined to take down Saddam Hussein and seize control of Iraq's vast oil deposits.  Bush Jr apparently just wants revenge on Saddam because his daddy didn't finish the job a decade previously.  The myth is spun that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction (UK Prime Minister Tony Blair famously went along with this, and lied to the House of Commons when he claimed they could be deployed within 45 minutes); secretary of State Colin Powell (Tyler Perry) is coerced into making a cringe-worthy address to the United Nations General Assembly making the case.  It's sad to see a noble and honest man such as Powell have his dignity stolen. 

The desperation with which the key players struggle to find some justification, however flimsy, for an attack put me in mind of this cartoon; eventually they seized on the fact that al Qaeda lieutenant and Bin Laden loyalist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had moved from Afghanistan to Iraq.  Around this point in the film broadens its scope from a biographical depiction of Cheney's rise to power and starts to demonstrate his wider influence on domestic and global politics and society.  It induces incredulity; how could such brazen dishonesty go unchallenged?  It's blackly humorous in every sense of the word black, and would be funny if its consequences weren't so destructive and tragic.  Cheney consolidated his power further as Rumsfeld is forced out with no mention of unknown unknowns and Bush bumbles along on his merry way.  The popular perception of Bush Jr as a buffoon is partly borne out here, but McKay wisely steers clear of this path, as did Oliver Stone in his level-headed "W." with which this film has some similarities, historically and thematically, if not tonally.  Sam Rockwell gives an effective, somewhat understated performance as a vaguely over his head Bush, which heightens the focus on Cheney, as is the intention.

Whilst this is Bale's film without question (he was Oscar nominated for Best Actor) the supporting actors are all solid.  In addition to the aforementioned Carell,who almost manages to humanise Runsfeld, and Rockwell,  we have Tyler Perry in an unfamiliar role as Colin Powell, and particularly to the largely unheralded, despite an Oscar nomination for Best supporting actress, Amy Adams, reliable and versatile as ever.   The most surprising role goes to Jesse Plemons (Fargo series 2, Friday Night Lights, Bridge of Spies), whose character Kurt acts as a narrator, although the audience is initially none the wiser as to his relationship with Cheney; [mild spoiler:] it's later revealed that he is just an ordinary citizen whose heart, after his death in a car accident, ends up in Cheney's chest after his latest heart attack.  This works on a symbolic level, implying that Cheney literally ripped the heart out of the everyman citizen.  It's one of the stylistic and narrative contrivances, however, which have caught some reviewers and some audiences off guard, and rubbed some up the wrong way.  It's certainly not something one would expect from a political bio-pic, and adds to the films distinctive package.

Much has been made of these stylistic quirks.  They work for some but not for others.  I found them to be effective and memorable.  It seems that great effort has gone into comparing this to McKay's previous film, 2015's Oscar Winning The Big Short.  That film, based on the book by Michael Lewis (*) was a satirical take on the Global Financial Collapse of 2008, and opted to employ celebrity cameos and much fourth-wall-breaking to illustrate the complexities of Collateralized Debt Obligations, Credit Default Swaps, Sub-prime Mortgage Bonds, and all the rest.  But to do so is to miss the point of Vice. Where The Big Short took artistic licence to tell essentially what was a true story, this film uses historical events, with which it plays fast and loose, to paint a portrait of an individual and his lasting affect on society.  It's too convenient to place the two in exactly the same basket, although that's not to say there aren't some similarities.  This is also ostensibly a true story, but the boundaries between fact and fancy are less clearly drawn.  One of the best gags in Vice comes during the end credits, when a focus group (seen previously giving their opinions on the war) breaks into an argument about whether the film has been too liberal or too conservative.  It's a brave move since it undoubtedly reflects the widespread opinions of the audience which has just watched the film.  Another (possibly too) cute moment comes midway through the picture when a set of faux credits runs, showing Dick and Lynne retiring to Wyoming to breed dogs and live happily ever after; Not really, says McKay, gotcha. Another sees Cheney and cohorts dining in a five star restaurant, where the waiter (Alfred Molina) reads off a series of menu items including rendition and enhanced interrogation techniques. Cheney says thanks, they'll take the lot. 

It's easy to see why this film is divisive.  It sits somewhere between outright satire and serious drama.  It's funny, but in a smirking rather than laugh out loud way.  It's undeniably messy and a little loose, and it never really gets under its subjects skin.  But of course, remembering the disclaimer, it doesn't fully attempt to; it does, but comes up with a relatively simple, if unsatisfactory answer: he's a bad person.  It's enough to say that, more or less, this is what happened.  And the presiding message is that once one has a taste of power it might be hard to relinquish it.  To paraphrase Lord Acton, "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".  It's challenging partly because of what it says about the world today.  Despite the best efforts of the 44th President, we live in an environment where it's not just normal, or expected for the President or senior politicians to lie, it's overlooked and even commended.  Watching this film makes one almost nostalgic.  It serves as a reminder that, any revisionism regarding George W Bush's presidency is misplaced (although it's heartening that he is implicitly critical of the current incumbent). He was fully complicit in handing the keys to the kingdom over to Cheney and Big Business.  But that was a generation ago, and a film like this is necessary to make and /or keep folks aware of what a bin fire it all was.

It's one of life's great conundrums how a film like this could come from the director of such fairly low to middlebrow - and that's being generous - comedies. Talladega Nights, the Anchorman films, and Step Brothers.  But it's a welcome direction in which for this talented filmmaker to venture.  There is a hint of things to come in the film The Other Guys, which is tangentially about financial corruption, particularly evident during the end credits.  But now McKay seems to be tackling "serious" subjects, albeit in an unconventional way; his next project is slated to be Bad Blood, another true story about an entrepreneur who creates a successful biotech company which comes under investigation from the Federal authorities, which could prove similarly interesting.  Certainly Vice is not for everyone.  Some viewers will be deeply frustrated at its apparent lack of insight, others will be irked by its arguably frivolous diversions, but anyone with more than a passing interest in politics, or geopolitics, should find something thought provoking therein.  It's a film which may well stand the test of time as a depiction of what has been, and still is, a turbulent era in the world.

(*) All of Michael Lewis' books are worth reading, taking as he does a variety of complex subjects and presenting them in a readable and easy to grasp manner.