Vice (2018) * *

Directed by:  Adam McKay

Starring:  Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry, Jesse Plemons, Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Eddie Marsan

Why make a movie about Dick Cheney, one of the most despised, yet influential people in American political history, if you're not going to infuse him with insight or personality?    Richard Dreyfuss proved in the underrated W (2008) that you can provide the cagey puppet master with some semblance of life and still keep his manipulation skills on display for all to see.    There are times in Vice in which Christian Bale (who is made up to look uncannily like the former Vice-President) can barely rouse himself to the level of audible speech.    He spends a lot of time pondering and not much else.    Director McKay promises in an amusing prologue that they tried their best to create a portrait of the very private Cheney, but this is where the much-maligned artistic license could've come in handy.

Vice plays like (and I'm sure I've used this comparison previously) a magician still unwilling to show you how he pulled off his latest magic tricks, even though you paid him to do so.   It keeps its subject so guarded that we can't get involved.    Then, McKay launches cutesy cinematic tricks at us in an almost Cheney-like attempt to distract us from the fact that its Cheney is a dud.    There are plenty of elements here to turn Vice into a fascinating political satire, but they don't come together cohesively.  The most intriguing aspects of Cheney's life occur when he was George W. Bush's vice-president, in which he redefined how much power such a position could wield.    Cheney essentially ran the government, and influenced Bush to start an unjust war in Iraq because focus groups preferred us to be at war with a nation than Al-Qaeda.

The same ground was covered, albeit from the media's side, in Shock and Awe from earlier this year, and that movie was able to work up a sense of outrage in the viewer.   Vice never achieves such liftoff, even with the political powder keg which was the Iraq War.    We first meet Cheney being pulled over for drunk driving in his home state of Wyoming when he was in his early 20's.   He was kicked out of Yale for partying too much and failing grades, and after having to be bailed out after a bar fight, his fiancee Lynne (Adams) lays down the law.  Either he grows up and becomes respectable, or she's gone.   He grows up, to be sure, while the respectability eludes him to this day.

Soon, Cheney finds himself as an intern to Donald Rumsfeld (Carell), a senator who will one day be George W. Bush's defense secretary and a key player in the administration.    Rumsfeld is cheerfully vulgar and a complete contrast to the stiff Cheney.   Carell's performance is the best thing in the movie.    He at least plays Rumsfeld with some juice.    Cheney soon becomes Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff and later Secretary of Defense to George H.W. Bush.   Then, Bush's oldest son comes calling looking for a running mate in the 2000 election and the wheels turn in Cheney's mind.    Knowing that Bush is inexperienced and a dolt, Cheney orchestrates legal maneuvering which gives the Vice-Presidents unprecedented security clearance and power, whose ramifications are still felt today.

Bale surely looks like Cheney, but the makeup is no substitute for a performance.    I don't know whether to blame Bale or McKay for what feels more like an impersonation than a character study.
Amy Adams covered similar ground in The Master (2012), in which she was the aggressive voice behind the scenes pushing for her man to conquer the world.    Rockwell approaches Bush with the appropriate levels of naivete and ruthlessness.    In the final scenes, in which Cheney breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience, he defends his bending of the law to his will.   At that point, I felt nothing.   No hatred or discomfort or understanding.   That is when I knew Vice just didn't do the job it intended.   McKay gives us numerous satirical points of view and other efforts, such as false ending with rolling credits and a fourth-wall breaking narrator who seems unrelated to the events, but who is exactly inside Cheney?   And why should we care?   Vice never offers a definitive answer to those questions.   It sees much, but doesn't see through.