In The Dark Knight (2008), the second instalment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, there is a telling scene where Batman locks himself in a room with the Joker and bars the entrance to prevent any intervention from the law enforcement officials in the next room. The inference in the scene is clear; the self-appointed vigilante Batman is prepared to use whatever methods necessary to interrogate the villainous Joker, unlike the public officials who are hidebound by laws, codes of practice and the niceties of those pesky constitutional rights. The film, and this scene in particular, was embraced by many right-wing pundits and commentators as a cinematic endorsement of the Bush Administration’s post 9/11 outlook and philosophy. This was a philosophy that sought to radically redefine the strategy of the “War on Terror” with a willingness to shed the long-established conventions and pieties of international relations, and resort to extreme methods as a necessary means of engaging and defeating extremism.
The political figure most associated with this policy approach, even more so more than President Bush himself, was his enigmatic Vice-President, Dick Cheney; how ironic is it that the actor who portrayed Batman in Nolan’s film, Christian Bale, is the same actor who now plays Cheney in Vice, Adam McKay’s biopic of the former vice-president and left-liberal bogeyman. Bale’s is far and away the film’s standout performance; as Cheney, he physically disappears into Cheney’s familiar impassive, humourless, hunched, shuffling presence, including his nuances such as his distinctive clipped, brusque manner of speech. Bale’s is by far the stand-out performance, and a bravura turn in a large and mostly underused ensemble cast, although Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney does well in a thankless role, although she struggles to rise above a screenplay that seeks to portray her as a Lady Macbeth-type accomplice to her husband. Less impressive are Sam Rockwell as George W Bush and Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.
Overall, however, the efforts of Bale and his castmates are not done justice but what seems an underdeveloped and unfocussed script which hovers uncertainly between outright satire and serious character study. There are many moments when McKay’s screenplay seems to betray his origins and as a comedy skit writer on Saturday Night Live. Indeed, Bush and Rumsfeld seem more like broad caricatures in one of that show’s politically-themed sequences than fully realised characters in a screenplay with serious things to say. In large measure, McKay’s film appears to share its DNA , along with is political outlook, with a Michael Moore film, particularly in its scattergun approach and its gimmicky digressions designed to convey weighty abstract concepts in more digestible form. These gimmicks include a scene in an imaginary restaurant, where Cheney, Rumsfeld and their fellow travellers are invited by an unctuous, fictional waiter (Alfred Molina) to select from a menu that includes ‘rendition’, ‘enhanced interrogation’ amongst other dubious options (Cheney’s triumphant declaration is, of course, “We’ll take them all!”) and a scene where Dick and Lynne mull over the wisdom of joining George W Bush’s ticket in a pseudo Shakespearean exchange. The forced and contrived nature of the transitions between a conventional narrative and these heavy-handed flights of fancy tends to undermine and confuse the film’s impact, especially the mock Shakespearean scene which takes the viewer out of the film and only serves to highlight the comparative paucity of the script.
Perhaps these defects are in some form unavoidable. Cheney was, and remains, a deliberately obscure and imperviously opaque figure who defies most attempts to gain meaningful insight into his mind or character. McKay attempts to deal with this challenge by spotlighting a couple of famous public episodes; his invitation to veteran senator and foe Patrick Leahy to, ahem, ‘go forth and multiply’ on the floor of the Senate and the incident where Cheney accidentally shot a friend, Harry Whittington, during a quail hunting expedition. The latter is seen as a significant indicator of the power and aura that Cheney had managed to gather around himself, so much so that the victim, Whittington, felt compelled to apologize to Cheney, one assumes for the inconvenience he caused by placing his body in the way of the Vice-Presidential bullet. Another of McKay’s rare attempts to convey some light and shade is his portrayal of Cheney’s somewhat unexpected, albeit understated support of same sex marriage inspired by his daughter Mary’s lesbianism, a stance which caused no small measure of confusion and distress with his conservative support base.
But these interludes offer little insight into Cheney’s character or motivations, beyond the familiar, predictable left-liberal characterisation. It invites the conclusion that Cheney, despite occupying a privileged and massively influential position at the very heart of power, remains a largely unknown, and seemingly unknowable enigma. Vice, despite a being a watchable and engaging retelling of recent history, really falls between two stools and fails in its aspirations to shed any new light on its subject. It is too heavy-handed and obvious to succeed as satire, using a sledgehammer as its weapon of choice when a scalpel would have served better. But ultimately it is also too indulgent, undisciplined and eager to confirm the bias of its target audience to serve any real serious intent.
Perhaps there is a good film to be made about the controversial life and career of Richard Bruce Cheney. But, unfortunately despite its best attempts and some fine performances, Vice is not that film.