Vice

Coronavirus 6/23/2021 3:58:35 PM 8.4

Vice (2018) Direction: 8/10 Filmmaking: 7.5/10 Story: 8/10 Acting: 9.5/10 Entertainment: 8/10 Musical Score: 9/10 Final Grade: 8.3/10 Standout Performance: Christian Bale Summary: Vice rises up against many of its competitors in the American Political genre of film as Director Adam McKay delivers a very informative, dramatic, and what I can assume to be as accurate as possible tale of Vice President Dick Cheney, and the George W. Bush administration.

CinemaSerf 2/6/2024 12:23:23 PM 8.4

Christian Bale makes full use of his skills as an actor and of the prosthetics department to offer us an engaging, if largely speculative, account of the rise of Dick Cheney. A man of modest abilities at school, he managed to master and then to manipulate the American political establishment to the point where, elected vice-president, auteur Adam McKay would have us believe he was the de-facto ruler of the United States. It's interesting how this domino trail becomes established. The old school network putting, initially, the politically savvy Donald Rumsfeldt (Steve Carell) into a position able to advance the career of the increasingly ambitious Cheney. His wife "Lynne" (Amy Adams) is no slouch here, either - she shares her husband's quest for power and when George Bush Sr wins election, Cheney's unique abilities to exploit the government machine and ensure his own self-promotion and preservation come to the fore. The arrival of the ostensibly rather hapless and out-of-his-depth George Bush Jr in the White House appears to play into his hands still further as the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasion of Iraq are presented, here at any rate, as decisions made by a government within a government using the principle of unfettered "executive authority". It hasn't quite the satirical nature of an Aaron Sorkin script, but it's still quite a darkly focussed, at times quite depressingly pitched assessment of the the paper-thin nature of American democracy, of money buying power and of incompetence being no barrier to the nuclear codes. At times that's quite funny, at other times quite scary - but through it all, Bale and Adams work well. Together they form a power couple that might just have put the Clinton's to shame. How much is true, could be true, might be true? Doesn't really matter - US politics is a brutal game and just like as with many European monarchies, it's just as dynastic!

Gimly 6/23/2021 3:58:15 PM 8.4

Being Australian and under 30, Dick Cheney is not someone I ever payed a lot of attention to. I knew he shot that dude and the dude he shot is the one who had to apologise somehow, and that he was one of the evil puppet-master types who stood behind George W. That's it. So while Cheney as a subject matter isn't something I can say I **care** about, it's also not material that's old hat to me either. I ended up watching it only because that's what my mate wanted to do for his birthday, but I'm glad I did. I did not **love** _Vice_, but for the sort of thing I don't normally gravitate towards, I was riveted. _Final rating:★★★ - I liked it. Would personally recommend you give it a go._