Movie Review: Vice (2018)

Who cares about Dick Cheney right now? Really. We all lived through the Bush 43 administration, 9-11, the WMD lies, we saw the way the hunt for Bin Laden in Afghanistan magically morphed into the war in Iraq right before our eyes, and we've all -- in our own way -- either moved on, made our peace with it, let it go, or just forgotten about it for a while because (let's face it) we're in the midst of one of the most bizarre and galling presidential administrations this country has ever seen. Do we really need to go back and feel like crap about the Bush administration all over again?

I suppose we do. But I still don't understand precisely why. I'm sure there's an interview out there with Adam McKay (the director) about why this film needed to be made right now but I've not read it. And anyway...when would there be a good time to go back and dredge a lot of this stuff up? There would never be a good time.

We all kind of knew -- or at least suspected -- that Dick Cheney was pulling the strings behind the George W. Bush administration but I think what this film does is dig deeper into that suspicion and give it an actual, legal framework. Apparently (spoiler alert) early in his career Dick Cheney latched onto a little known legal interpretation of Article Two of the constitution called the "Unitary Executive Theory" which basically gives the president unlimited power. Then, according to the film, he used that theory, in conjunction with his considerable powers of manipulation, to influence President George W. Bush's decisions, especially those regarding the war in Iraq. I don't know if it's all true, but it all seems to add up.

Anyway, just as a film, it was damned entertaining. Vice is not nearly as heavy, serious, or literal as W.  (2008) which, coming at the tail end of the Bush 43 administration, seemed much more aptly-timed. No, Vice is a lot more fun and arresting and, in my opinion, much more powerful. And Dick Cheney, as it turns out, makes for more interesting source material than Dubya.

Adam McKay uses a satirical, darkly humorous style, playing with time-sequence, allowing characters to break the fourth wall, even using an anonymous, comic narrator we don't understand the identity of until the very end of the film. In one of the film's funnier, more "meta" moments, Dick Cheney and his family are frolicking happily by a pond in the back yard of their palatial Virginia home in the early 90s. The screen flashes those "epilogue" kind of lines, depicting an ideal world in which Dick Cheney retires from politics in order to focus on his health and his family and raise Golden Retrievers with his wife. Credits roll as the camera pans away from this idyllic scene we all know to be the complete opposite of what happened in real life. But this is just one example of the film's sometimes jarring humor that forcefully keeps you engaged.

There were some really great moments in this film, such as the scene in which Cheney's daughter, Mary comes out as gay or when the camera pans into Cheney's open (empty) chest cavity during his open heart surgery, just to name a couple. Scenes that really, genuinely rivet you into your seat. This film will at times gross you out, appall you, bring you to the brink of tears, and make you laugh out loud. Watching it felt like a kinetic, almost participatory experience. I can absolutely seen an Oscar in this film's future.

For me, in the end, this film shed a lot of light on a public figure I knew next to nothing about, just like most of us probably know very little about any of our Vice Presidents. And for good reason; they usually have very minor roles in a presidency. Well, Vice will probably serve as the definitive and probably final word on the most notable exception to that rule: Dick Cheney. I can't imagine another feature film ever gets made about Dick Cheney after this. But, who knows...maybe in 50 years he'll be viewed as a hero. History is a funny thing.