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Vice

So Merv and I caught Vice at the Luna last week and I was chuffed to hear it was showing in the 'new' screens just up Oxford street. (Bonus review - mostly fine, smallish theatre but the seats didn't allow for any spreading, very narrow at the knee area).

So, the film. Right after it I think I was riding on a wave of anti-neo-con sentiment, happy to sneer at all the U.S. Republican shithousery. But isolating the film itself took a bit longer and I realised that, aside from its politics and its prosthetics, it's not very good. It's timeline seemed scattershot rather than inventively fractured. The comedic side dishes mostly fell flat. The central idea that Cheney was the real, insidious power behind a raft of evil deeds is not really news and adding in the Unitary Executive Theory angle was perhaps a stretch, considering Nixon had probably tried fiddling this years before.

Christian Bale as Cheney is immense, helped in no small part by the amazing prosthetics and make-up required to bulk him up. Sam Rockwell as Bush Jr is again excellent but without much to do. Amy Adams and Steve Carell are fine also as Lynne Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. One of the highlights was the wrinkle on the 'unreliable narrator' gimmick. I may be Billy-no-mates here but I didn't see it coming.

I thought the film overstayed its welcome too. Bale gives a short speech to camera, justifying his 'career' but this was a message to Americans, especially those that dare criticise, not to the rest of the international viewing public. Clearly, director/writer Adam McKay is aware of his audience but it just provoked an eyebrow raise and a shrug from me. Besides, there was a perfectly good shot of Cheney's recently removed heart to finish on. Not too subtle but it would have been a nice enough way to end it.

All in all, a bit of a stand-up comedy ramble, disguised as a film. This might be why it reminded me of a cross between Mike Moore's stuff and Sacha Baron Cohen's interview with the real Cheney on Who Is America.

See also:

Sticking with the U.S. politics theme, I'll go with the excellent Frost/Nixon (2008), directed by Ron Howard and Oliver Stone's W. (2008), mainly to compare the rogue's gallery cast - Bale vs Dreyfuss, Rockwell vs Brolin, Carell vs Glenn, etc.

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