Review: Vice

Image courtesy of Annapurna Pictures.

There's a whole lot going on in Adam McKay's "Vice" and much of it is interesting, from a number of solid performances to a story bursting with intrigue. So, it's a shame that the director attempts to mimic the style of his much more successful "The Big Short" and comes up a little short with this sort-of biopic of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Alan Bennett once said that "history is just one fucking thing after another," and that is the format in which McKay's film often, unfortunately, unfolds. First, we briefly meet a young Cheney (Christian Bale) being pulled over for drunk driving by a cop, then we see his then-girlfriend Lynn (Amy Adams), who ends up becoming his wife, berating him for his lifestyle. Then, Cheney is suddenly a congressional intern for Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell) in the Nixon years, then higher up in the food chain during the Reagan years, the chief of staff in the Bush administration, and so on until finally becoming the vice president under George W. Bush. And the film presents this material as merely one event after the other.

In "The Big Short," McKay employed a variety of stylistic techniques, most notably one in which characters - often lead characters, but also random Hollywood stars - break the fourth wall to explain complex financial issues relating to the 2008 economic meltdown. In that picture, the technique worked and was often humorous. When employed here, it feels unnecessary and bogs the film down. McKay also utilizes Jesse Plemons as the film's narrator, and when we finally realize his connection to Cheney, there is seemingly no particular reason that this character has been chosen to narrate the film.

But the lack of subtlety doesn't end there. There's a completely unnecessary sequence at the film's end when Cheney himself breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience in a manner befitting Frank Underwood in "House of Cards," spelling out everything that the film has been hammering us over the head with for the previous two hours. In another sequence, we are told that Cheney has mastered the art of selling ridiculous ideas through his delivery, and then we are treated to an exaggerated example of this, but it's a case of over-selling. Even less successful is a scene in which Dick and Lynn Cheney speak in Shakespearean verse to compare them to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Despite these myriad problems, "Vice" has a fair amount to recommend. When it's not overly indulgent on style, it can be quite funny. The performances here are all mostly very good. Bale disappears into the role of Cheney, both literally and figuratively, but Adams is the scene stealer as the steely Lynn. Carell and Sam Rockwell are clearly having fun as Rumsfeld and W. Bush, respectively, and Tyler Perry makes a surprisingly convincing Colin Powell.

But "Vice" is all over the place. It's an exercise in style over content, despite there being a fair amount of substance in this story. Cheney played a profoundly - and disturbingly - large role in reshaping the U.S. government in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and his reach for unlimited executive power is still being felt today. In other words, there's a great story to be told here, but the filmmakers often trip over their own feet. It's been said that a great film is often decided not by what it's about, but how it goes about telling its story. With "Vice," something was lost in the telling.