Review: Dick Cheney Biopic Vice Is as Subtle as a Shot to the Face

After Adam McKay explained the 2008 financial crisis—or, at least, a particularly sinister facet of it—with The Big Short, and was rewarded with a screenplay Oscar for his troubles, it makes sense that hed want to return to the well of recent history to educate us on something else. With much to rummage through, he found a singularly opaque subject to dust off and, if not polish, at least grace with the glow of cinematic attention. That subject is none other than the ghoul of the aughts Dick Cheney: the sinister machinator behind the ruinous presidential administration of George W. Bush.

McKays new film about former Vice President Cheneys rise to power, rather bluntly titled Vice, takes the bold position that Cheney—a shadowy puppeteer pulling the strings of the president and thus of the world—was bad. Its a not terribly daring nor original sentiment that McKay nonetheless issues at a busy, self-satisfied blare, heralding the summative declaration weve long, he seems to assume, been waiting for.

Vice is a jumble of asides and visual gimmicks and pointed digressions, much in the same way that The Big Short was. That buckshot tactic worked well enough on something as diffuse and hard to gather as the complexities of Wall Street. But when applied to what could be called a biopic—a study of one person—all that antic reeling obfuscates more than it illuminates. Theres a title card at the beginning of the film saying that, though Cheney kept his life and deeds very hidden and private, McKay and company did the best they could to tell the real story. But that little caveat actually pries open a wide chasm of possibility, and badly blurs the line between fact and a filmmakers imagination.

What Vice can get concretely right is Cheneys physical being. Theres plenty of that evidence on the record, at least. So enter Christian Bale, an actor whos never been one to turn down a transformative challenge. Here hes put on a considerable amount of weight, is wearing some kind of thin-pate wig, and has affected a sideways growl. He looks and sounds the part with eerie effectiveness. His Cheney is a mess of a young man who turns himself into a stealthy political operator, drawn to power and feeding off of it until he becomes his own formidable juggernaut.

In a vacuum, Bales performance would be a thrilling bit of imitation, a dark parlor trick thats all the more exciting because no one else is doing it. But in Vice, Bales uncanny apery is leaned on too heavily, as if half the films work is done because it nails the Cheney impression. Successfully telling Cheneys story—particularly how he was uniquely suited to leveraging loopholes in executive power to reorder U.S. security policy toward disaster—requires more legwork than merely a good impersonation. McKay set a difficult, exacting task before his movie, and yet he keeps it too hepped up on pieces of flair to really knuckle down and focus.

McKay has clearly seen a Michael Moore movie or two, and has certainly seen David O. Russells American Hustle. With Vice, he badly fuses those influences together. The film moves with unwieldy verve. It jumps back and forth between time periods for no narratively satisfying reason. It aims for both grave assessment and outlandish gags. McKay, who also wrote the script, pitches Cheney as an opportunist whose only ideology is . . . well, actually, Im having trouble finishing that sentence, because Im really not sure who McKay thinks Cheney is—what guides him beyond the empty, robotic drive the script instills in him. We hear a little about Halliburton, and see him learn lessons in political sneakiness from Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell). But theres still a crucial why missing from McKays—and by extension Bales—portraiture.

We can probably trust McKays politics enough to assume that he is saying nothing good about Cheneys motivations. But, wait: then theres a final, direct-to-camera monologue in which McKay almost exonerates Cheney by implying that what he was really after, albeit recklessly, wasnt personal gain nor the advancement of crony capitalism, of narrowly rewarded American wealth. It was . . . the security of American families? That doesnt feel right at all—not in the real world, and not in McKays deeply confused film.

But the movie doesnt seem to know its confused, and confidently yammers and lurches along, perversely reveling in all the Washington scheming while serving up a real Lady Macbeth back home in the form of Amy Adamss Lynne Cheney. Adams applies her usual rigor to the role, but shes acting around a hollow creation, a lazy rubber-stamp of a mans idea of a woman adjacent to power. Adams had more complex, interesting stuff to do in this vein in The Master—and her wigs were a lot more forgiving. Sam Rockwell fares a bit better as Dubya, but the performance is more of a cartoon than the films intriguing teaser trailer suggested.

Im tempted to say that there could be value in Vice for someone who is unaware of Cheney or the Bush years, or the hideous calamity of the Iraq war. But the thing is, the movie feels specifically built to please and titillate those who already know. Its confirmation more than education, and thus is willy-nilly with its plotting and details, a greatest-hits parade of Cheneys misdeeds that fails to link them together in any thoughtful or convincing way. All the arch gloss that McKay covers the film with isnt earned, not when the movies foundation—intellectually, politically, artistically—is so rickety.

The worst of Vices indulgences is probably a framing device of sorts involving Jesse Plemons, which leans so heavily on one embarrassingly simplistic metaphor that its almost sweet. I say worst, and yet its mostly just dumb. It doesnt do any harm. Not like clumsily trying to analyze a bad man while kind of mythologizing him in the process does, anyway. Huh. Through that lens, I guess maybe the silliest parts of the movie are actually the best—which is often the chief goal for a comedy director. Vice, though, gives little reason for us to laugh—or to do much of anything else but roll our eyes.

Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Richard LawsonRichard Lawson is the chief critic for Vanity Fair, reviewing film, television, and theatre. He lives in New York City.