Ostensibly a biopic of former Vice President
Dick Cheney,
Adam McKay's Vice argues that he was actually the de facto President, with
George W. Bush taking a back seat, particularly in the globally crucial years from 2001-2003. Very much a political satire in the vein of Juvenal and Jonathan Swift, or films such as
Wag the Dog (1997) and
The Second Civil War (1997), Vice eschews conventional narrative structure, breaks the fourth wall regularly, intercuts shots of fly-fishing and animals hunting into the middle of tense plot-heavy dialogue scenes, features several self-reflexive references to itself, has a false ending, and has a scene in which characters speak in iambic pentameter. Much as was the case with recent "based on a true story" films such as
BlacKkKlansman (2018) and
The Front Runner (2018), Vice has one eye on the here and now, using Cheney's story as a vehicle to examine the current political situation in the US, positing that without the power-mad Dick Cheney and the Unitary Executive Theory, there would never have been a
Donald Trump. However, although there are many individual moments of brilliance, the film is unsure if it's a straightforward biopic or an excoriating satire, ultimately finding a kind of ideological middle ground that mixes comedy with pathos, not always successfully.
Narrated by Kurt (
Jesse Plemons), a fictitious veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, who claims to have a unique connection to Cheney, the film begins in Wyoming in 1963 as a young Dick Cheney (
Christian Bale) is arrested for drunk driving for the second time. It then cuts to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, as Cheney orders the shooting down of any suspicious commercial airliners, despite Bush (who was en route to Washington from Florida) not signing off on such an order. How Cheney got from being a drunk in 1963 to taking control of the government in 2001 is the film's primary focus. Much as in BlacKkKlansman, Vice concludes with a haunting montage that brings the story up to date, showing some of the long-term effects of the Bush-Cheney years (instability in the Middle East, irreparable damage to the environment, the rise of IS).
Vice presents Cheney as devoid of ideology, with a Zelig-esque ability to alter his manner so as to best deal with whomever it is in whose company he finds himself. In this sense, his political ambition is portrayed as cynical and mercenary; McKay's Cheney has no interest in attaining power so as to influence policy or stimulate ideological change, he is obsessed only with power-for-power's sake. One of the most telling scenes in the film happens quite early when he learns that Nixon and Kissinger are planning to bomb Cambodia without going through Congress. Asking Chief of Staff
Donald Rumsfeld (
Steve Carell), "what do we believe?", he is met by Rumsfeld laughing hysterically at being asked such a ridiculous question.
Nowhere is his character shown as more ruthless and power-hungry than in a scene towards the end of the film. With his daughter, Liz (
Lily Rabe), running for the Senate, a TV advert accuses her of "aggressively promoting gay marriage". Cheney's other daughter, Mary (
Alison Pill), had been married to a woman for over a year at the time. The day after the advert aired, Liz appeared on Fox News Sunday and said she did not support gay marriage, causing a rift between the family and Mary which remains to this day. The film features a scene the night before Liz goes on TV, in which she asks permission to defend herself. In a chilling moment lifted right out of
The Godfather Part II (1974), Cheney indicates his approval with a single silent nod of his head.
As with
The Big Short (2015), Vice is aesthetically audacious. For example, the film is edited in such a way as to remind me of
Oliver Stone's "horizontal editing" in films such as
JFK (1991),
Nixon (1995),
U Turn (1997), and, especially,
Natural Born Killers (1994). It's no coincidence that Vice was cut by
Hank Corwin, who cut several of Stone's 90s films. For example, as Chaney attempts to manipulate Bush (
Sam Rockwell) into agreeing to give him more power, there are intercepts of fly-fishing. It's not subtle, but it is effective. Elsewhere, much as Stone uses Coke commercials and footage from old films in Natural Born Killers, Vice features excerpts from the Budweiser "Whassup?" commercial and
Survivor (2000). In another scene, when Cheney first learns of the Unitary Executive Theory, the film cuts to a lion bringing down a gazelle. For me though, some of the most effective editing in the film is more conventional. One particularly strong example is as Bush declares war on Iraq, the camera tilts down to show his leg is shaking. The film then cuts to a shot of an Iraqi civilian's leg shaking as the bombs begin to drop.
Also similar to The Big Short is the film's sense of humour, with a tone of irreverence established from the very beginning, as the opening legend states, "the following is a true story. Or as true as it can be given that Dick Cheney is known as one of the most secretive leaders in recent history. But we did our f---king best." A particularly sardonic scene comes about an hour in, as the film shows Cheney turning down Bush when he asks him to be his running mate in 2000. At this point, the legend explains that Cheney had chosen family over politics, and that he happily lived out his days in Wyoming. As the Cheneys gather around a family barbeque, triumphant music swells, and the closing credits start to roll, only for the movie to interrupt itself, pointing out that that's not what happened. It's a very meta technique, and one which both mocks feel-good biopics, whilst also suggesting had Cheney not returned in 2000, the world could have had this happy ending.
Another very funny sequence sees Cheney and his wife, Lynne (
Amy Adams) in bed discussing whether or not he should accept Bush's offer, with the narrator explaining, "Sadly there is no real way to know exactly what was going on with the Cheneys at this history-changing moment. We can't just snap into a Shakespearean soliloquy that dramatises every feeling and emotion. That's just not the way the world works." This is immediately followed by Cheney and Lynne speaking in faux-Shakespearean blank verse as they work themselves up into a sexual frenzy (although technically, this is a duologue, not a soliloquy). In another scene, a waiter (
Alfred Molina), reads from a menu that features various forms of Cheney-endorsed torture. After listening to their options, Cheney gleefully declares, "we'll take it all". There is also a hilarious mid-credit scene, which sees a focus group descend into chaos when a conservative calls a liberal a "libtard", prompting a mass brawl, whilst two young girls ignore it so as to speculate about the new Fast & the Furious film.
For all that, however, Vice isn't a patch on The Big Short, for a number of reasons. For example, whereas in The Big Short, the self-reflexive Tristram Shandy-style narrative structure worked to the film's advantage, providing a way into the complex story, here it has the exact opposite effect, oftentimes distracting from McKay's thematic concerns, preventing the film from focusing on telling us how (and why) Cheney exploited loopholes in executive power to restructure US foreign policy.
The most egregious problem is that the film fails to give any kind of psychological verisimilitude or interiority to Cheney. Presenting him in an almost robotic manner, there is very little on what drives him, depicting his various deeds without offering anything cogent in terms of his motivations. Is he simply an ideologically-weak opportunist? Is he an evil megalomaniac fuelled by a deeper purpose, and if so, what purpose, and how? Could it all really have been about power, viewing the global geopolitical sphere as his own personal playground and nothing more? And if the film is arguing this, suggesting that this man, responsible for so much pain and suffering, did it all simply because he liked power, isn't that to downplay his agency, to allow one to argue that he didn't really know how much damage he was causing? Depriving him of psychology weakens any attempt to censure his actions. The film's Cheney is ultimately unknowable, and that makes his acts more easily forgivable. The argument that it was all because of power and greed really does next-to-nothing to help explain the man. It could, I suppose, be cited as an example of the banality of evil. Except that the film's Cheney is anything but banal. In fact, he's terrifying.
Cheney pressured the CIA to find non-existent links between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein so as to justify an illegal invasion of Iraq. He oversaw the public relations campaign to build popular support for the war. He encouraged the torture of terror suspects all the while denying it was torture. He was responsible for the worst strategic blunder in US history, the growth of a domestic surveillance state, the dictatorialisation of the office of the President, and the deaths of 4,000 American troops and at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Positing him as a man who was power-mad and little else, Vice remains always on the outside, trying to listen through the wall, never managing to open the door and expose his actual inner workings. The comedy and structural experimentation make it entertaining as a film, but it tells us very little about Cheney that we didn't already know. Strip away the artifice, and you'll find it doesn't have a huge amount to say. Never attaining the scale of tragedy to which it clearly aspires, the film functions instead to remind critics of Bush's cabinet why they became critics of Bush's cabinet. In the end, rather than exposing Cheney's dark soul, the film argues that he doesn't have one. And that is a far less interesting thesis.
