Vice

Dir: Adam McKay

2018

*****

Following on from his successful and effective financial comedy/drama The Big Short, writer and director Adam McKay set his sights to politics. He’s basically taken Oliver Stone’s 2008 film W as a template and added heaps of satire and tells of drak truths. Interestingly, Christian Bale was originally set to play George W. Bush in W.  before dropping out of the movie and being replaced by Josh Brolin. Vice is a step up from W for a few good reasons. We know far more now about the things that happened during the W. Bush presidency and we’ve lived through more of the repercussions. Under the Trump administration things look o get worse. Vice is essentially an explanation, using 100% fact I might add, as to why the world is in such a state. George W. Bush, until 2016, was widely regarded as the worst American president of all time but what Vice reminds us is that behind every idiot, there is usually a bigger one. That said, Dick Cheney, Vice President during the W. Bush administration, wasn’t just an idiot, he was a manipulative, cunning and conniving idiot, and I still don’t think we will know the full extent of his actions for years to come. The film is narrated by a guy called Kurt, we know very little about him at first, only that he is a  veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. The film opens with Dick Cheney and other White House officials and staff responding to the September 11, 2001, attacks, a pivotal moment in modern times and Cheney’s career. The film then flashes back to Wyoming in 1963, where Cheney finds work as a lineman after his alcoholism led him to drop out of Yale University. After Cheney is stopped by a traffic cop for driving while intoxicated, his wife Lynne Cheney convinces him to clean up his life. The film flashes forward to 1969 when Cheney finds work as a White House intern during the Nixon Administration. Working under Nixon's economic adviser, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney becomes a savvy political operative as he juggles commitments to his wife and their daughters, Liz and Mary. Cheney overhears Henry Kissinger discussing the secret bombing of Cambodia with President Richard Nixon, revealing the true power of the executive branch to Cheney. Rumsfeld's abrasive attitude leads to him and Cheney being distanced from Nixon, which works in both men's favour when Nixon stepped down. After Nixon's resignation, Cheney rises to the position of White House Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford while Rumsfeld becomes Secretary of Defense. The media later dubs the sudden shake-up in the cabinet as the Halloween Massacre. During his tenure, a young Antonin Scalia introduces Cheney to the unitary executive theory – a theory of US constitutional law holding that the US president possesses the power to control the entire executive branch. The doctrine is rooted in Article Two of the United States Constitution, which vests the executive power of the United States in the President. After Ford is voted out of office, Cheney runs to be representative for Wyoming. After giving an awkward and uncharismatic campaign speech, Cheney suffers his first heart attack. While he recovers, Lynne campaigns on her husband's behalf, helping him to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. During the Reagan Administration, Cheney supported a raft of conservative, pro-business policies favoring the fossil fuel industries. He also supported the abolishment of the FCC fairness doctrine which led to the rise of Fox News, Conservative talk radio, and the rising level of party polarization in the United States. Cheney next serves as Secretary of Defense under President George Bush during the Gulf War. Outside of politics, Cheney and Lynne come to terms with their younger daughter, Mary, coming out as lesbian. Though Cheney develops ambitions to run for president, he decides to retire from public life to spare Mary from media scrutiny. During the presidency of Bill Clinton, Cheney becomes the CEO of Halliburton while his wife raises golden retrievers and writes books. A false epilogue claims that Cheney lived the rest of his life healthy and happy in the private sector and credits begin rolling, only for them to abruptly end as the film continues. It’s the nice future that could have been, had Cheney not been so selfishly power hungry. Cheney is invited to become running mate to George W. Bush during the 2000 United States presidential election. Recognizing that the younger Bush is more interested in pleasing his father than attaining power for himself, Cheney agrees on the condition that Bush delegates "mundane" executive responsibilities, such as energy and foreign policy, to him. As Vice President, Cheney works with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, legal counsel David Addington, Mary Matalin, and the Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, to exercise control of key foreign policy and defense decisions throughout Washington. The film returns to the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, as Cheney and Rumsfeld maneuver to initiate and then preside over the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in the killing of civilians and the torture of prisoners. As the War on Terror mounts, Cheney continues to struggle with persistent heart attacks. The film also covers various events from his vice presidency, including his endorsement of the unitary executive theory, the Plame affair, the accidental shooting of Harry Whittington, and tensions between the Cheney sisters over same-sex marriage. Cheney's actions are shown to lead to thousands of deaths and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq, resulting in him receiving record-low approval ratings by the end of the Bush administration. While narrating Cheney's tearful deathbed goodbye to his family after another hospitalization, Kurt the narrator is killed in a motor accident while jogging. In March 2012, his healthy heart is transplanted into Cheney. A few months later, Cheney acquiesces to his daughter Liz's saying she is opposed to same-sex marriage when she runs for a Senate seat in Wyoming, leaving Mary angry and upset. Liz later wins the election to her father's former Congressional position. At the end of the film, an irate Cheney breaks the fourth wall and delivers a monologue to the audience, stating that he has no regrets about anything he has done in his career. There is a wry mid-credits scene that depicts a focus group for film descending into chaos when a right-winger slams Vice as biased and attacks a liberal panelist, while two younger panelists discuss the next The Fast and the Furious movie. I think the film is more than fair and Cheney is fair game. No doubt anyone who has seen the 2013 ‘documentary’ The World According to Dick Cheney will agree and if you have right-wing tenancies and ask where the balance is, then watch both films, there’s your balance. Christian Bale is brilliant in his transformation and Amy Adams is great as Lynne Vincent Cheney. Strong support comes from Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld and Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush who are both superb. I was going to describe the film as great satire but in many respects it isn’t. Is it an assassination of character? Well, yes and no. It’s entirely factual apart from the character of Kurt, and all the despicable things that Cheney does in the film he did in real life. Whether or not you agree that his actions were despicable or not is a totally different matter. I thought the end credit scene was quite interesting, a piece of Adam McKay that he could help but throw in there. You could say it was a little frantic of him but I totally related to it. Kurt was an interesting choice of narrator too. While the identity of the person whose heart Cheney received is unknown, it seems fitting to suggest it could have been a solder, a person who gave their heart for their country, only to be manipulated and lied to at the risk of their lives by the leaders they respected. I think this was probably the only way you could do a biopic of someone like Cheney though. If Spielberg made a Lincoln-style biopic it just wouldn’t work, it’d be too serious and I’m not sure it would hold him to account for all of his actions. It’ll be seen as the work of the loony-left for sure and the protests of ‘there was no balance’ will ring on while the film still flies over the heads of those not concentrating on what is going on in the world. A great film about the terrible world we live in.