“Are you more ruthless than you used to be?”
One of the frontrunners for this year’s awards season is the political biopic, Vice, chronicling the life and career of “one of the world’s most secretive official”, Dick Cheney, the 46th Vice President of the United States. Featuring an all-star ensemble cast lead by the outstanding Christian Bale in his grand return to Oscar buzz, the film is helmed by writer-director Adam McKay (The Big Short, Step Brothers), looking to once again break through the often dismissive attitude of critical audiences towards comedy movies and shine through the spotlight of international accolades.
Set throughout the sixties to the end of the Bush-Cheney administration in 2008, the film explores the many political battles, struggles and, to make an incredible understatement, the questionable decisions that Cheney made as Vice President, and the major, long-lasting impact that he had on the USA’s foreign policy and its place on the global stage.
Awakening on a drunken night out in the southern state of Wyoming in 1963, we get a close look at the louder, uninhibited side of Cheney’s persona, a man fighting an internal battle with the fear of failure that develops into an insatiable craving for power, quickly flash-cutting to the White House on the morning of the September 11 attacks, intercut with real-life footage of the destruction of the World Trade Center along with an intimate, and surprisingly sympathetic moment shared by Cheney and his wife, Lynne (played by the spectacular Amy Adams) as the world seemingly falls down all around them, Cheney quickly seizes his moment for absolute authority to act in a high position of power.
Conveyed through the lens of innovative and engaging cinematography, the film’s script is only just overshadowed by its main cast’s powerful performance, with particular praise undeniably owed to Bale, Adams and Steve Carrell, who portrays Donald Rumsfeld, one of the key figures in the Republican Party over the past forty years.
This is a film that really dissects many of the available facts of history, allowing viewers a rare opportunity to look beneath the surface of the way they may see things before their eyes, and really consider how the world can work in different ways, an aspect that is particularly powerfully illustrated by McKay’s fast-paced, captivating and innovative editing techniques compliment his unique method of storytelling. These all make for a supremely engaging film that is certainly worth a watch for audiences of all ages.
This film effectively marks the last major motion picture I will have seen at a cinema in 2018, and Vice has managed to rise to the top of my Favorite Films of the Year, winning first place just ahead of Spike Lee’s BlackKklansman, and I highly recommend going to the cinema to see it even if just for its entertainingly striking visuals and perfectly scored soundtrack.