User reviews

It's not about telling a story, It's about making a poor simplistic critic like... "bush is bad, the vice is bad, the republican party is bad, fox news is bad, the big companies are bad" and that's It. That's the message.

You see, Im Brazilian... I don't know everything abou american politics, but I can assure you that politics are much more than good vs. evil. There are no monsters out there, just people making decisions and having conflicts of interests. The portrait of chaney presented seems much more like a supervillain from the american comics than a real person.

The story is not even funny, people weren't laughing and the editing is totally bizarre. I think a movie needs characters with more depth and complexity. The story is childish, "evil guy meeting with evil guys, doind evil stuff" It becomes totally predictable.

Great actors and amazing portrayal of VP Cheney by Christian Bale. The political leanings of the writing is nauseating and quite liberal. It's extremely evident when footage of Obama is shown with heroic music in the background - the messiah has finally come and has taken the highest office of the land to save us!

I loved "The Big Short" film by same director, but similar tactics using humor as cut-ins and narration failed to meet that standard. Way too long, and way too heavy-handed in making every scene an indictment of Dick Cheney as villain extraordinaire who singlehandedly and intentionally connived with his cohort to start the Iraq war. Anyone with a brain who lived through 9/11 and the aftermath knows it was much more complex than that. If this film attempted to show the multi-faceted situation, including poor intelligence by government agencies, majority of Congress voting "yes" to get rid of Sadam Hussein and start a war, and unbridled emotional response to an unexpected and devastating attack, this would have been a more factual film that the audience could get involved in. It could have been a great movie, rather than a biased, politically motivated exercise that used a hammer to blame rather than to learn and understand. Slides were used toward the end to put the nail in the coffin in case the audience missed the point, and became more propaganda than involving cinema. That said, actors were very good, especially Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney, who was a far more interesting person than I ever knew...would have been great to focus more on her family background and achievements...Steve Carrell as Donald Rumsfeld...and Christian Bale as Dick Cheney, who was good, but sometimes seemed to be involved with creating the character than being the character.

My personal opinion is that liberals will love it conservatives not so much. The ending is particularly obnoxious...the movie is long and you feel it.. all that being said...I think it should be viewed..just not at the box office.

To be fair i only watched the first hour, about half of it, but it was so boring. I hope it got better. I am Australian, not American. I majored in international politics. This was not political and exploritative enough for me. The "humour" was cheap. It touched on a few facts, but nothing revelationary. I would have liked to see the second half so i cant speak for the whole movie, but the first half was just so bad :/

Loathing Cheney and loving American Hustle, I really looked forward to Vice-- and was disappointed. The short-comings of The Big Short were amplified here and the result felt dumbed-down. Vice gives no insight into what makes Cheney tick as a person nor does it provide any analysis of the Cheneys as representatives of a class and of neo-con ideology. Instead it offers a series of vignettes and sketches, played for laughs, but unfortunately neither as short nor as funny as SNL skits. Although Christian Bale does a good job of physically impersonating Cheney, the character is so poorly written that he comes across as a cardboard cut-out. Amy Adams is sorely underutilized in the role of Mrs. Cheney. Symptomatic of the low regard the writers have for their audience, the "unitary executive theory" (a key feature of the Kavanaugh confirmation before it got swamped by beer and the Devil's Triangle) is inaccurately and simplistically described.

Just as the title suggests. Great acting and cinematography, but come on. By the end of the movie the multi shot cut scene was pretty much implying every bad thing in the world from bank forclosures to forest fires is Dick Cheney's fault. Come on.

The only time I laughed was during the post credits scene, it didn't only show lack of creating humor from the director and screen writer, but by the entire casting crew. It should have been morminated as one of the worst movies in 2018, only few actors made it extra-ordinaire, the likes of Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Sam Rockwell, were the only exceptional piece of the movie, in summary it's a dead piece of comedy.

I wasn't a fan of the Big Short and Vice failed to impress me as well. McKay is a director that has a talent for comedy but not so much for dramatic movies. Even though Vice has good moments and performances it lacks coherence and has atrocious pacing. McKay tries to do many things in this movie to a point where it feels like the movie doesn't have a style and he's just throwing everything he's got at the wall. In particular the use of freeze frames and stock images were very jarring and took me out of the movie. Now as I said before there were some clever bits here and there but most bits were either rushed over or dragged on for too long. All in all, I've seen someone say this feels like a Wikipedia article put to film with some funny bits thrown in and I agree with that statement and I feel the same can be said about the Big Short. Now some people might enjoy this style of film-making and that's alright but I don't think I'll be looking forward to the next movie Adam McKay does unless he goes back to his roots.

I've come to the conclusion that me and Adam McKay just aren't ever going to get along. We're not, we are incompatible. His dramatic efforts consistently fall short, with 'The Big Short' being a tolerable piece of drama. Yet here we are with a biopic on Dick Cheney and how he rapidly became more and more powerful as he climbed up the governmental hierarchy. And much to my dismay (because I'll save you reading the rest of this review), I hated this.

There was a "comedic" scene halfway through where the film playfully ends abruptly by rolling the credits, and I found my blood physically boil. I started to sweat and breathe extremely heavily through frustration. It was at the moment, I found myself irritated by Vice. McKay undoubtedly was the wrong director for this biopic. The visual distractions, fourth wall breaks, onscreen annotations and constant narration detracted from what could've been a superior drama. McKay having wrote the screenplay, who's background mostly consist of comedies, was unable to solidify the narrative's tone. For example, when Cheney persuades president Bush to invade Iraq, the proceeding scene is a montage of war-torn clips accompanied by a booming classical number. McKay believes this to be powerful, but actually it comes across as pretentious. This entire biopic is so large in scope, yet every aspect of Cheney's life was underdeveloped and unsurprisingly dull. It almost felt like a dramatisation of Cheney's Wikipedia page. The constant "witty" narration that explains every flippin' political term and individual as if we know absolutely nothing. A biopic should be informative enough to allow the people to be engrossing. Vice just spews jargon from every direction, to a point where I thought I needed to bring a notepad. Its ferocity just makes the film forgettable and far too clinical.

Then we come to the treatment of Cheney and the viewpoint that McKay wanted to share. Throughout the entire film, it is heavily implied by Plemons' narration and McKay's introductory montage on how the world is now doomed, that Cheney is a bad individual. Every selfish action he took was just to improve his chances of becoming president. But, this is all diminished during the final scene when Cheney breaks the fourth wall and talks to us unintelligent viewers and spouts something like "You may hate me. But I did everything for my country. I protected the people I love.". Why? When you've spent over two hours depicting this individual to be a monster that you then decide to sit on the moral fence and leave the audience to decide if he was bad or good. That just sums up McKay in my opinion. Someone who needs to get off his high horse and stick to one tone, perspective and direction.

It completely frustrates me that a film like this falls short, when the performances are so brilliant. Bale, in all his method acting glory, packs on the pounds and transforms himself to become Cheney. He was outstanding. His voice, mannerisms and physicality were the perfect imitations of Cheney. Adams yet again gives a solid performance to which she will not win any awards (one day though...). Carell and Rockwell were decent, although did not have enough screen time to make a big enough impact. I would even go as far as saying there were various scenes, particularly after the methodically dull first half, that nearly captivated me. The outside meeting where Bush is chomping on chicken and Cheney is using his power of persuasion was a glimpse of excellence. But McKay wastes his cast for annoying gimmicks, uninspired direction and unimaginative storytelling that nearly made me walk out of the cinema. Such a waste!

"Vice" Directed by Adam McKay The Director Who Made 2015s "The Big Short" Has Done Another Great Movie That Combines Mix Of Comedy And Drama At The Same Time. Based On a True Story Of Dick Cheney The American Polictian And Businessman Who Served As The 46th Vice President Of The United States From 2001 To 2009. And it's Cited As The Most Powerful Vice President in American History. Christian Bale Delivers a Remarkable Brilliant And a Very Completely Transformation Performance As Dick Cheney Even The Make Up On Christian Bale As Cheney Was Awesome And Changling By Making Him To Look And Act Like The Real Dick Cheney Was The Best Thing Of This Entire Movie And i Have To Say This is The Best Transformation On a Good Actor Since Gary Oldman Where He Played Winston Churchill in "The Darkest Hour" And Leonardo DiCaprio Where He Played J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar". Also Amy Adams Who Plays Dick Cheney's Wife Lynne Cheney Even Her Make Up Was Great Too And a Very Defferent Kind Of Role That She Has Never Played Before. This Film Has a Great All Star Cast Like Sam Rockwell Who Plays The Jerk Son To George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Steve Carrell Who Plays Donald Rumsfeld, Tyler Perry Who Plays Colin Powell And a Quick Cameo By Alfred Molina. This is Christian Bale And Amy Adams Third Film Together That They Did Since They First Met in Two Of David O'Russell's Films "The Fighter" And "American Hustle". Also This is Steve Carell Second Film That He Did With Adam McKay in His Other Movie "The Big Short".

I don't know much about Dick Cheney and I thought the information the film told was very interesting.

However the film was very hard to follow. How it was put together made for absolutely terrible story telling. We heard many others in the cinema complaining of the same.

As people were complaining about how hard it was to follow, literally 2 minutes later the film hits us with a very confusing poetry scene. We were all left wondering what the hell was happening!

The film also has a huge left wing bias, so expect the usual digs and negative language at conservatism / republicans. But it's Hollywood, so it's to be expected.

Christian Bale nailed his role, absolutely great performance.

So in conclusion, it's an interesting film with a great lead performance... but totally let down by confusing storytelling and cheap political bias.

What a tedious experience and waste of good actors. Half of the movie is short cuts of wolfs, fishes, tea cups and scenes like discussing how to do mac and cheese.. They tried to be funny and mock with Cheney mentality, but the only thing i finded genuin funny was, as always, Steve Carell. I rather watch "Who is America" and laugh my ass off alone with USA stupidity. Bale performance was top notch.

Christian Bale's hairpiece and makeup do some great acting in this confusing mess of a movie. The cast does well in this hyperkinetic, pseudo-real movie. I'm not a historian but the movie plays fast and loose with the facts and doesn't seem to care. It also never settles on a tone that it feels comfortable with as well as every scene being edited to a point that any moment of character introspection seems to be cut away from which forces the actors to do as much with the little time they have. The movie's a mess but it's an interesting watch but not a pleasant one.

Let's begin by saying that after the first half of the movie, I couldn't watch any more. I had to make a big brake to be able to finish it later on.

It's been said that the film consists some kind of propaganda. Well, that is up to each viewer to decide. It is certainly not the issue of this discussion.

The Vice is a biopic on Dick Cheney, one of the most powerful and influential politicians in the modern American history. Christian Bale is amazing in the leading role.

The movie opens with a scene where Dick Cheney, as vice president in the government of George W. Bush, along with other officials manage the September 11 attacks. Then the film flashes back and follows Dick Cheney's route from failure to the White House.

A narrator - we find out about who he is at the end of the movie with a rather repulsive way - quides us explaining and commenting on the events; not with great success, in my opinion.

The film talks about too many events. By doing so it doesn't focus on any of them. It looks like a big list referring to events we can easily find about at the internet. There is no space to go in depth disclosing issues and views behind the facts. Neither it manages to reach the essence of who that man is. Saying way too much but saying nothing really. This can be frustrating.

The film is rather flat. No tensions, not much to anticipate and nothing to make you laugh; although humor is to a point subjective.

Personally, it was not a movie I enjoyed watching.

Emperor Palpatine, Michael Scott and George Bush walk into the White House to plan wars and mess the world up! This is the only comment that I am giving on the context of the movie to avoid any political discussions.

I think Adam McCay was not sure if he wanted to do a biopic, a comedy, a documentary or a flashy Hollywood movie. Ultimately, he failed at everything. It is hard to accurately portray the life of someone of Chenney's magnitude in a span of 2 hours. Instead of focusing on certain events by making them look dramatic and impactful, McCay ends up skimming though 40 years with jokes and flashes. Flow is absolutely non existent with some of the worst editing that I have ever seen. What's even worse, is that by trying to use the narrator and explanation cuts like in The Big Short, he just sinks it even deeper.

Big props to the makeup department and the lead actors, specially Bale and Carell. Also a nod to the midway ending which was creative. McCay tried to make a crossover between House of Cards and Big Short but did not know where to lean. The entire film, he treats the audience as if we are idiots by explaining the obvious and not giving us anything new except the countless names of politicians, departments and laws that no one cares about.

I have no idea how it got these nominations but if you decide to go and see it, watch Fahrenheit 9/11 first, it will make this movie easier to digest.

There's a reason this came out as a feature length film and not a documentary special. No one can fact check them. No one can sue. No one can complain, because after all, this is fiction. It's through the same vehicle that brought us Braveheart and Gladiator, and probably about as accurate. The production tries its hardest to make this feel like fact, but in all reality this is just another drama.

Acting, screenplay, editing..... all the customary Hollywood stuff was really quite good though. Christian Bale was fantastic. Music was engaging. This would be rated much higher for me if it wasn't for the deceptive, agenda-driven presentation.

This movie is depressing. if we were living in a different time where stuff like this no longer happens, then it makes sense to have a movie like this. so sad. the movie is generally well made with awesome acting but i didn't enjoy the humor and i was pretty bored (1 viewing)

Omg what did I just watch. Sooo boring. Only nice if you love politics and are over 40.

Sadly, whilst Bale and Adams were their magnificent best, I just couldn't get into the patchy storyline, which honestly, was not very interesting. A few mildly amusing moments, but really, this was a pretentious stage for our two leads to strut their stuff.

Boring, fragmented and largely annoying....

An american movie made for an american audience. If you like american history and have interest in white house mechanics this can be a movie to watch.

Fails miserably as a Mockumentary. Nominated for Best Picture (based on Bale's performance I guess)? Didn't hear a single chuckle in the theater. Steve Carell is over the top awful in this.