Vice (2018) - Movie Review

Propaganda is not a dirty word. 99 times out of 100, whenever someone something for being propaganda, it’s because it doesn’t align with their own views. Cut deep enough into any piece of media and it always ends up being an endorsement for some brand of political thought, whether it’s immediately obvious or otherwise. I myself honestly hold no qualms in my own writings being viewed in the same way, as I’m not exactly shy about my worldview and what I perceive as matters worth discussing.

 

However, while keeping all of this in mind, there is still such a thing as bad propaganda, where the intended message at the forefront is either fundamentally incorrect or it’s presented in a way that doesn’t make it easy to get the desired effect from the audience. I’ve covered plenty of the former on here before, and even looked at some of the latter, but honestly, it’s the latter that ends up hurting more. It’s also why this film hurts as much as it does.

If there’s one thing I can never take away from this production, it is the gusto of the actors. Christian Bale’s phenomenal skill as a character actor holds very true here, as his depiction of the shadow president hits all the points of vile charisma that he needed to. The make-up effects definitely help with that effect, but it’s ultimately his acting chops that sell it in its entirety. And around him, Amy Adams as his wife Lynne, Sam Rockwell as a pitch-perfect George W. Bush, and even Tyler Perry in a rather harrowing turn as Colin Powell all add to the sense that these are people who give a shit about this story.

Shame that that feeling isn’t shared behind the camera. Writer/director Adam McKay is relatively new to this more dramatic kind of cinema, but as he showed back with The Big Short, his background in comedy has proven to be a boon when it comes to McKay’s brand of socio-political commentary. Or, at least, it had proven to be as such back then, because it certainly doesn’t pan out here. I can scarcely recall a production that felt this all-over-the-place, incorporating elements of black comedy, docudrama, Oscar bait biopic tropes and that very specific brand of ranting agitprop that creatives like George Clooney and Oliver Stone base their whole careers on, the result of which is an embarrassingly cluttered clusterfuck.

This goes beyond simply trying to cover too much history in too small a running time, a recurring problem with the more overambitious biopics out there, and careens right into genuine incomprehensibility. Between Hank Corwin’s wonkily chaotic editing, the jarring changes in footage quality and the general lack of clear direction in the storytelling, it devolves into a haze of imagery that is meant to evoke a reaction but it’s too scattershot to really gauge what reaction that is. I mean, if you legitimately reach the point of openly declaring that you don’t even know what the people shown were doing or thinking at a given moment, don’t bring it up and focus on something you do know about; it is seriously aggravating how many times this happens in-film.

The constant shifts in the timeline, not to mention the utter pointlessness that is the framing device involving Jesse Plemons as the narrator, make this difficult to really keep up with, overloading the audience with so much information that it really would’ve helped if they just chose one part of the Bush/Cheney legacy to focus on and stick with that.

A part like the Iraq War, which is where the film admittedly hits some high points. As confused as this production is, it still manages to maintain that Big Short-style breaking down of jargon to make the most important points sink in. And as far as showing the calamity that is the U.S.’s intervention in the Middle East during the 2000’s, this certainly nails just how much damage was done. In the arena of dramatised cinema, productions about the Bush administration are in short supply and this certainly makes the point on why this one should exist. In theory, at least.

It’s really frustrating to be sitting here, agreeing with the majority of what this film has to say regarding Dick Cheney, Bush and the quite disastrous actions under their belts, and yet feeling the need to call this film out for doing a bad job at saying any of it. Much like Snowden or Money Monster, just because I agree with it in principle doesn’t excuse bad art for being bad art.