OVP: Vice (2018)

Film: Vice (2018)
Stars: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Tyler Perry, Jesse Plemons, Naomi Watts
Director: Adam McKay
Oscar History: 8 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Christian Bale, Supporting Actor-Sam Rockwell, Supporting Actress-Amy Adams, Film Editing, Makeup & Hairstyling*, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I had to double-check, but contrary to popular opinion (and by that I mean, the 3-4 people I actually would discuss such a film with), I didn't hate The Big Short when it came out.  McKay's filmmaking had its bumps, and I didn't love all of his decisions in the film, but the movie progressed nicely and had enough to recommend it that I gave it 3-stars when I first viewed it.  McKay, given the newfound respect of an Oscar & a license to make any film he wanted, could have focused on the sharper aspects of his big "critical" break, cleaning up some of his indulgences and giving us a specific, interesting follow-up.  Instead, he decided that he wanted to ratchet up his spastic storytelling contrivances, give us a heavy-handed, directionless look at a ruthless viper of a human being, and pretend that he can tie a giant bow on the top of it, guilt-free, as a result of being the guy who made the movie.  This results in one of the worst films I've seen all year, and (should it be nominated, as many including myself are predicting), will make it one of the worst films to ever contend for Best Picture.

(We all lived through it-we don't need spoilers, though perhaps they would have been handy at the time) The film follows the long political career of Dick Cheney (Bale), from his beginnings as a drunk driver who avoided the draft to his quick trip to Congress, staying under the tutelage of Don Rumsfeld (Carell), which led him to important roles in the Nixon, Ford, and Bush-41 administrations, as well as a ten year stint in Congress before he became Vice President.  The film mostly focuses on Cheney & his wife Lynne (Adams), giving little credence to any story arcs focusing on those around them, only adding in a few moments about their daughters Liz (Rabe) and Mary (Pill) toward the end to underline how callous and nasty they were in their drive to power.

Vice is going to be hard for any conservative to stomach, even if a lot of the actions of the Bush/Cheney administration line up with historical fact, even if it's not always obvious which actions the real-life Cheney actually perpetrated and which ones are McKay's imagination running-wild.  I'm not going to be here to defend Cheney, as some have, saying the film is a hatchet job.  Cheney is arguably the politician I like the least, and considering his views on torture, the poor, energy reform, and the way that his administration fleeced the American tax coffers for his own profit are inexcusable, and probably should have landed most of the administration in jail at some point.  It's a testament to how truly awful Cheney was that I listed eight things off the top of my head that he did while in office the film didn't have room for that any other biopic would've been the main headline-it takes a lot of time to name check every evil thing that Dick Cheney ever did.

No, my problem here is the way the film doesn't seem to have a goal, other than to make attempts at being clever and consistently condescending.  McKay's directorial choices are wacky (frequently having Seth MacFarlane-esque cutaways where Adams & Bale quote bad Shakespearean dialogue or a mid-film credits sequence where they make the Cheneys look like the Waltons).  These serve as distractions from the simple fact that McKay doesn't have much of interest to say of Cheney.  He does make an unusually poor idea for a protagonist, since he never changes (he's an oppressive thug for the entirety of the film, and the only thing that he ever alters his mind on is eventually cutting his daughter Mary loose to further his political ambitions).  He clearly wants there to be heroes in the Bush administration, and makes the likes of Bush (played by Sam Rockwell), Condoleezza Rice (LisaGay Hamilton), and Colin Powell (Perry) seem more sympathetic by making them just dumb.  This is lazy history, and tries to exonerate George W. Bush in a way so many critics do by making him seem less intelligent and less aware of what was going on in the administration than he obviously would have been (and even if you're going to say that Bush is dumb, you can't say the same for someone like Condi Rice, who is clearly Cheney's equal intellectually & knew exactly what was happening during this administration).  Thankfully he doesn't do the same for Adams' portrayal of Lynne, by all-accounts the more natural politician of the two, who seems just as power-hungry as he is, albeit thanks to sexism without the same avenues to achieve it.  About the only figure who should garner any sympathy is Pill's Mary, but McKay has given Dick Cheney (too much) credit for backing civil unions and glosses over how the vice president sold his daughter out to give his other daughter a leg-up in her failed bid for the Senate, making what should be a big betrayal of a scene feel too muted.

This would all be bad, all be just a gigantic mess of a movie, if McKay wasn't so damn smug about Cheney in his screenwriting.  Based on the politics of McKay's recent filmography, I think it's safe to assume he did not vote for Bush/Cheney, but neither did tens of millions of other people who protested against, campaigned against, and denounced this administration.  And yet he has the gaul to have Bale's Cheney pull a Frank Underwood and say "you wanted this, you wanted me to do this," as if to stave off the most virulent of conservative critics of the movie (did anyone else feel like he was ripping off that famous Sideshow Bob speech?..."but deep down you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican").  He also frequently states that voters were too stupid or too obsessed with mindless pop culture to notice that Cheney, Rumseld, and their ilk were committing war crimes without any repercussions, but that's simply not true (millions of Americans stood tall against Bush & Cheney, protesting and voting against their administration, and to say otherwise is an insult to all those whose work eventually led to the Obama administration).  Also, it feels pretty hypocritical for the man who spent the Bush administration making Anchorman and Step Brothers to suddenly be high-and-mighty about idiotic pop culture during a time of great trouble.

As a result, I can't get behind any of this movie, and I think it's an insult it's about to be hailed by organizations like the Golden Globes and (inevitably) the Oscars as a great movie when it's not only a terrible one, but one that maintains no sense of context.  Even the performances are questionably done-are you going to tell me that Dick Cheney, of all people, has no idea why he commited these monstrosities?  That Lynne Cheney has no real idea why she wanted more power? And yet this is the way that Bale & Adams play them, and no amount of convincing makeup and prosthetics can make up for a lack of center in these cinematic creations.  These are the sorts of people who would sell out their own daughter to gain some more respectable poll numbers, and yet I left Vice having no understanding why they even wanted to be in DC in the first place other than pure evil.  McKay's film lacks perspective and is a meandering dumpster fire.  Dick Cheney didn't deserve better than that, but the ticket buyers for this movie sure as hell did.