Vice

Why make a movie about Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) of all people?

Why?

Why do I have to write about this film?

Why!

With all the charismatic influential inspiring dynamic leaders out there, why choose to make a film about him, even if, in bizarro plutocrat lingo, those adjectives strangely apply?

The filmmakers admit they have little to go on yet revel in proceeding blindly nonetheless, and although they couldn't find much information about Cheney, they still stuck to that which they found, rather than creating a more balanced narrative, wherein which the speculative film, which they admit to making, takes imaginative precedence over headlined gossip and likelihood.

I'm not saying avoid what's supposed to be true or replace it with alternative fact, I mean that if you're imagining much of what took place anyways, imagine a more compelling film that narratively ties his different motivations together.

See so many Steven Spielberg films.

Vice is more like, "we know he did this, and it's believed he did that, and this is all we really have to go on, so we'll make the rest up but emphasize what we do know, or believe, even if the information we have writes a clunky story."

Not that it's a bad film, it's alright, and it's better than a lot of films that follow an individual's career over the course of a lifetime, but Cheney's just not such a bad guy for so much of it, in fact he's primarily depicted as a respectable family man who played by the rules for most of his career, and then suddenly he's this power mad mendacity prone borderline authoritarian, it's not that the facts aren't commercially presented, it's just that Vice hasn't much of a foreshadow.

If you admit you're making speculative pseudo-non-fiction why play your cards so close to your chest?, The Big Short certainly didn't and it made a more stunning impact.

As it stands, Vice isn't sure if Dick Cheney was a monster or just a fortunate hardworking man of self-made means.

It emphasizes that the second Iraq war was likely caused by him for self-centred reasons, but still goes out of its way to make him seem loving and kind, with prim bipolar whitewash, comedically applied.

It does explain where political obsessions with executive authority come from, and in the last scene Cheney appears like Khan in Star Trek into Darkness, boldly stating that many others would have done the same.

But many others wouldn't have done the same, and the bold speech at the end, which may win an Oscar, encourages stubborn self-obsessed self-aggrandizement regardless of communal consequence, and it's unclear if McKay is being critical of Cheney's ambition or trying to make it seem as wholesome as pumpkin pie.

He certainly makes his character sympathetic.

Spending more time coddling than criticizing him.