Vice (2018)
Directed by Adam McKay
George W. Bush picks Dick Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton Co., to be his Republican running mate in the 2000 presidential election. No stranger to politics, Cheney's impressive résumé includes stints as White House chief of staff, House Minority Whip and Defense Secretary. When Bush wins by a narrow margin, Cheney begins to use his newfound power to help reshape the country and the world.
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34 films that influenced Vice
What critics say influenced Vice
Writer-director McKay, who struck comedic gold with classic Will Ferrell vehicles such as “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights” and then elevated his game with “The Big Short” (winning the Academy Award along with his co-writer for best adapted screenplay), doubles down on the flights of fancy and stylized storytelling devices he employed in the latter film.
McKay, who won an Oscar for chronicling the 2008 financial collapse in The Big Short , employs similar narrative tactics in Vice to help us navigate through decades of U.S. politics – characters directly addressing the camera, whip-fast pacing, and weaving footage of actual historic events into the story.
With his last film, The Big Short, Adam McKay achieved the near-impossible: he made a fizzingly entertaining movie about mortgages.
McKay first found success making grand idiot comedies with Will Ferrell and then stepped to the grown-ups’ table with “The Big Short” (2015), his tripartite flaying of the people responsible for the 2008 economic crisis and a movie which handed Bale and Carell rather more complicated roles.
Like “The Big Short,” his rollicking explication of the financial crisis of 2008, this movie transforms gaudy pop-cultural toys into tools of polemic and explanation.
Adam McKay, known for his biting political analysis and dark humour in films such as The Big Short, has hybridised the genres of political satire and bio-pic, creating a dark and mischievous lovechild of a film.
Afortunadamente para quienes tienen prejuicios ante este tipo de biopics que giran alrededor de personalidades “ilustres” de la política, El vicio del poder se desmarca radicalmente de la mayoría de los tópicos que caracterizan a este tipo de cine que tendría algunos de sus más destacados representantes en el Alan J. Pakula de la fundamental Todos los hombres del presidente (1976), que plasmó en la gran pantalla las consecuencias del escándalo Watergate, o, sobre todo, en el siempre polémico y visceral Oliver Stone, director que, a lo largo de su carrera, ha retratado a algunos de los más grandes líderes norteamericanos (con sus luces y sombras) mediante títulos como JFK (1991), Nixon (1995) o aquel W. (2008) protagonizado por Josh Brolin en la piel de George W. Bush y en el que Richard Dreyfuss ya realizó una aproximación secundaria a la figura de Cheney, que bien podría funcionar estupendamente como parte de un interesante programa doble junto al filme de McKay.
The film that Vice most resembled, to me, was Oliver Stone’s Nixon.
The veteran cutter has done everything from Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" and "Nixon" to Terrence Malick's "The New World" and "The Tree of Life," and his style is prevalent here.
Unlike other portraits of powerful men in the White House (“Nixon,” “W.”), there is no attempt to show nuance or pursue inquiry.
Afortunadamente para quienes tienen prejuicios ante este tipo de biopics que giran alrededor de personalidades “ilustres” de la política, El vicio del poder se desmarca radicalmente de la mayoría de los tópicos que caracterizan a este tipo de cine que tendría algunos de sus más destacados representantes en el Alan J. Pakula de la fundamental Todos los hombres del presidente (1976), que plasmó en la gran pantalla las consecuencias del escándalo Watergate, o, sobre todo, en el siempre polémico y visceral Oliver Stone, director que, a lo largo de su carrera, ha retratado a algunos de los más grandes líderes norteamericanos (con sus luces y sombras) mediante títulos como JFK (1991), Nixon (1995) o aquel W. (2008) protagonizado por Josh Brolin en la piel de George W. Bush y en el que Richard Dreyfuss ya realizó una aproximación secundaria a la figura de Cheney, que bien podría funcionar estupendamente como parte de un interesante programa doble junto al filme de McKay.
From its tart, angry true-story disclaimer to its meta mid-credits scene, Vice proves as strikingly original in form as Oliver Stone’s JFK .
This doesn’t have to be fatal: JFK , while it had little to do with the truth, was an entertaining frolic in the nutty brambles of Oliver Stone’s derangement.
Afortunadamente para quienes tienen prejuicios ante este tipo de biopics que giran alrededor de personalidades “ilustres” de la política, El vicio del poder se desmarca radicalmente de la mayoría de los tópicos que caracterizan a este tipo de cine que tendría algunos de sus más destacados representantes en el Alan J. Pakula de la fundamental Todos los hombres del presidente (1976), que plasmó en la gran pantalla las consecuencias del escándalo Watergate, o, sobre todo, en el siempre polémico y visceral Oliver Stone, director que, a lo largo de su carrera, ha retratado a algunos de los más grandes líderes norteamericanos (con sus luces y sombras) mediante títulos como JFK (1991), Nixon (1995) o aquel W. (2008) protagonizado por Josh Brolin en la piel de George W. Bush y en el que Richard Dreyfuss ya realizó una aproximación secundaria a la figura de Cheney, que bien podría funcionar estupendamente como parte de un interesante programa doble junto al filme de McKay.
In many ways, Vice is the film that Oliver Stone attempted and failed to make in W. (2008), his too-soon take on George W. Bush.
The veteran cutter has done everything from Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" and "Nixon" to Terrence Malick's "The New World" and "The Tree of Life," and his style is prevalent here.
Y hay también toques a lo Michael Moore, el director de Fahrenheit 9/11, con lo cual decir que la mirada del director Adam McKay es cero condescendiente con el protagonista no es faltar a la verdad.
We are a country at war against ourselves, driven by these two impulses, and even if McKay thinks he’s making a fictionalized Fahrenheit 9/11 , he’s accidentally succeeded in making a movie about our split consciousness.
To wit: Michael Moore mined much of this material in his hit documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 back in 2004.
Black Panther was fit to bursting with selling points, all combining to deliver the studio’s best film: Michael B Jordan’s standout villain, scene-stealing performances from Danai Guria and Letitia Wright, plus the direction of Creed’s Ryan Coogler who proved an inspired appointment.
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Director of Photography Greig Fraser (“Rogue One,” “Zero Dark Thirty“), is a far superior choice than “The Big Short’s” Barry Ackroyd who went too far with the ‘Bourne‘-like approach to docudrama comedy and composer Nicholas Britell’s (“Moonlight“) score seems to give subtle homage nods to the mordant patriotism method Terrence Blanchard often applies to Spike Lee films.
“It’s a little bit Veep , a little bit Zero Dark Thirty .
Among the artistry on display, pay special notice to the visual variety conjured by cinematographer Greig Fraser (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Killing Them Softly,” “Bright Star”).
Eager impersonations of well-known sycophants fill the frame, from an overeager Carell (likable but hardly convincing; see Errol Morris’ “The Unknown Known” for context) to a straight-faced Tyler Perry as Colin Powell (fleeting and random).
Cheney would never follow Rumsfeld’s lead in sitting down for a 33-hour interview with leading documentarian, Errol Morris, In Morris’s film, The Unknown Known (2013), Rumsfeld comes across as a fantasist who takes no responsibility for his actions, and has no regrets.
Carell is almost giddily ruthless as Rumsfeld, the only character in “Vice” with fewer scruples than Dick himself (though one should really go back to Errol Morris’s “The Unknown Known” and watch the real Rumsfeld obscure the truth).
In reality, Vice is closer to being Bill Murray from Rushmore .
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Themes
Given such savage qualifications, you’d think Cheney would make a tasty target for cinematic satire, along the lines of Kubrick’s wild and wooly Dr. Strangelove, or perhaps the subject of a depth portrait that envisions Persnickety Dick as a late-empire Citizen Kane, some darkly shrouded ghoul roaming the back channels of absolute power.
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And where Welles had William Randolph Hearst as a model for his Citizen Kane , McKay has Fox News’s Roger Ailes (Kyle S. More) to play with, first viewed floating the idea for a conservative news network while working in the Nixon White House, and later identified as a key player in the conspiracy to turn public opinion rightward, alongside megadonors and conservative think tank–sponsored market research.
Memorables resultan, en este aspecto, el sketch que tiene como protagonista a un chef interpretado por Alfred Molina y su particular “carta” de platos o el irónico uso de la canción América de la banda sonora de West Side Story (Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, 1961) en los créditos finales.
And I mean literally before that scene, as the closing credits unspool to the tune of “America” from West Side Story .
In its final ironic use of the already ironic "America" from West Side Story, Vice flaunts its repellent spirit.
(As if the movie were trying to out-smirk its own subject, the actual credits roll to the strains of West Side Story ’s “America.”)