Vice (2018)

[baumer]

Discuss

[YLF]

The stylistic choices the director makes in terms of the editing make this a subpar movie.The acting is phenomenal though, and I would recommend seeing it just because of that. The movie would have an engaging scene that would quickly transition into satirical picture/meme/music/madness lol. If the movie did not include that element I would've rated it higher. Those parts really took me out of the film, and for such a serious topic was not needed.

 

B-

Edited December 28, 2018 by YLF

[That One Girl]

good movie.  post credits scene was pretty hilarious which seems to be my most controversial opinion about it judging by the reactions to it.

[The Panda]

It’s a good movie, with a great performance by Bale but it’s pretty uneven tonally.  It can’t tell what it’s wanting to be, parts feel like a parody, then all of the sudden it’s self serious, then the narrator goes on a monologue about why Cheney is evil (and not that the narrator is wrong, he isn’t, but there were a lot of points where I wanted him to shut up about the obvious and get back to the movie).

 

I think it works as is, but would be greatly improved without the intersplices of narration.  They didn’t add anything to the movie, and all of the points the narrator brought up would have been better served in the movie itself.

[Webslinger]

Much like Adam McKay’s previous cinematic venture into politics, Vice is a righteously angry movie that tempers its rage and cynicism with effective humor and convention-defying narrative decisions. Unlike Oliver Stone’s W., Vice puts in the necessary work (and has waited the necessary time) to fully contextualize Dick Cheney’s morally and ethically dubious political career in the 2000s and maintains a strong focus on casting his actions in a damning light rather than getting sidetracked in its attempts to humanize him. McKay and star Christian Bale do dig deep enough to make Cheney feel like a real person who acted out of a genuine – if narrow and misguided – sense of conviction, but they don’t equivocate and allow the positive attributes on display at various points in the film to cancel out the message about its subject’s abuses of power and the consequences those abuses had on the United States. The script is sharp and the framing device with Jesse Plemons’s narrator character and occasional explanatory breaks in the action allow the film to maintain a swift pace and dodge becoming a straightforward biopic. Bale is reliably strong in the title role; it’s far from a career best, but his mimicry is on-point and he commits to finding reason and rationalization behind Cheney’s actions in the face of the unmistakably unsympathetic tone McKay takes toward his character. It’s such a natural, seemingly effortless performance that it hardly feels like a performance. Amy Adams is also in fine form as Cheney’s wife, whose Lady Macbeth-like qualities call to mind her previous work in The Master. Like Bale, she works so hard at rationalizing her character’s cutthroat attitude and lack of moral scruples that she feels like a believable character rather than a satirical caricature. And really, that last quality is what ultimately makes Vice so successful. While its comedy works, the film avoids taking the easy route of painting Cheney and his enablers as cartoonishly evil buffoons; by presenting them as the heroes of their own story – and constantly reminding audiences both explicitly and implicitly that this story is one that led quietly to the mess we find ourselves in now – he makes the prizing of power over conscience feel all the more chilling.

 

B+

 

Stray Thoughts:

- Man oh man, did Adam McKay ever make this movie for a very specific audience and not at all for another. I can see why its reception has been so fiercely divisive in the critical community.

 

- Even though the film juggles different tones, it feels surprisingly cohesive if only because of the fact that whether it's trying to be glibly funny or dead serious, it stays on message about Cheney's unscrupulous actions.

 

- Tyler Perry really should let other people direct him more often. The Colin Powell role isn't big enough to allow him to shine as much as he did in Gone Girl, but he's really effective in his few scenes here. I'd even go so far as to say that he's far more deserving of awards talk than Sam Rockwell in his brief, not-particularly-special imitation of Dubya.

 

- The Mary subplot was devastating to watch. I knew Cheney had a gay daughter and I kept waiting for someone to abandon principles and throw her under the bus, but the scenes following Liz's betrayal were gut-wrenching.

 

- The shot of the heart toward the end was great. It's easy to take it as the film's way of saying that the attitudes that should have died out with the end of the Bush administration have had their life extended in this current political setting.

[Ezen Baklattan]

Ironically, one of the the biggest issues with Vice isn’t that it rightfully condemns Cheney as a subtle, Machiavellian fiend but that you don’t feel any motivation or even any personality in Cheney. He’s just a drone for the plot to go from point to point, which itself felt like fast forwarding through a Wikipedia article. I don’t think I understood Cheney any better than what I knew going in. Bale is naturally an impressive transformation at least, while Adams goes further as Cheney when the plot gives her something to do.

 

As someone who really dug THE BIG SHORT and its empathetic anger, not to mention McKay’s unconventional storytelling, it doesn’t work trying to weave itself in as a typical narrative. The tone for this is all over the place, and a lot of it simply comes off as Diet Scorsese. Some of the more out there bits, like the Shakespeare scene, narration, and the credits fakeout simply feel jarring and out of place.

 

I agree with McKay’s politics and despise Cheney, but this film isn’t going to do much more than preach to the choir at best. It’s exhausting, and not in a good way.

 

I was between a C and a C+ but the mid credits scene pushed it easily towards the former.

[filmlover]

Definitely a bit of an uneven movie. Biggest problem with the movie is that it’s pretty much redundant. Like @Spagspiria said, we learn absolutely nothing from this that we didn’t already know heading in. After Adam McKay delivered such an entertaining and informative movie in The Big Short, it’s unfortunate he can’t quite do the same with the Bush administration. But I thought it worked more often than not. Christian Bale is easily the best thing about the movie and the reason to see it, giving another completely transformative turn that captivates even when the movie sorta plods along. Amy Adams (even though she has much less to do than I expected) is also in terrific form as always and Sam Rockwell gives a version of Bush Jr. that avoids Will Ferrell-esque parody, but Steve Carell’s interpretation of Donald Rumsfeld never convinces. This movie actually reminded me of Oliver Stone’s W. from a decade ago more than anything else, though this works a bit better than that movie did. It’s an inconsistent movie that nevertheless gets a recommendation on account of having another phenomenal Bale performance. B-

[Alpha]

A movie where the importance of its message outweighs the quality of its filmmaking. It has its hints of greatness, but it never reaches the kind of horror and dread that made The Big Short such a phenomenal movie. Maybe it'll get better on repeat viewings.

 

Also, its going to really disappointing if THIS is the performance that earns Amy Adams her first Oscar.

 

B-

Edited January 3, 2019 by Alpha

[Cap]

I don't know what I detest more, Dick Cheney or this movie.

[baumer]

I really took umbrage with the first 30 minutes of it.  I felt that some of the choices that McKay made in telling story were just so preposterous that it really weighed the film down.  And then all of a sudden it became something more, much more and when it started getting into the 9/11 stuff I was hooked.  The film even went so far as to imply. without actually saying it directly, that the 9/11 invasion was an inside job.  You have to connect the dots, but it's not hard to do.  

 

The performances were terrific and I loved seeing Naomi Watts in her small cameo as a Fox news anchor.  I did have a problem with some of off beat ways McKay chose to tell his story but the film got better and better as it got further and further into everything.

 

9/10

[Fancyarcher]

My review.

 

https://dailyuv.com/973035

[Jonwo]

I enjoyed it but I do agree that it's an uneven film with fantastic performances. Bale as Cheney is great as is Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney but Tyler Perry surprised me as Colin Powell in his scenes.

 

 

[Hatebox]

A good movie that's frustratingly close to being great. The Bush years are easily the most engaging (if slightly rushed) part, which helps because you get the best stuff last. It admits from the get-go it basically has nothing to work with as far as intimate details of Cheney's life go, so it wisely goes the full-on operatic route. Indeed the music's so high in the mix you sometimes can't even hear what the actors are saying (or maybe I'm just getting old).

 

Given this, it seems odd the movie decides to give Cheney no motivation whatsoever. There's a neat joke about him 'choosing' to be a Republican because he finds Rumsfeld funny, but after that he's just driven by... power, I guess? It's a question the movie doesn't even try to answer, which feels like a waste of artistic license. If McKay's been asked about this in interviews I'd be keen to hear his response.

 

PS: the fake credits scene midway through made my cinema laugh hard. It was both a funny and, in retrospect, a bloody tragic 'what could have been' moment.

 

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by Hatebox

[CoolioD1]

has more similarities to Gotti than i expected.