BEFORE: This one's still in theaters, I spotted that the other day when I slipped out to see "Aquaman", but I'm watching it on an Academy screener. Sure, I could go pay and see it in the theater, but I don't have the time to go into the city on a Saturday, and anyway, have you SEEN the ticket prices lately? I can't afford more than one movie on the big screen per week. I may be shorting them some box office, but I'm helping get the word out about this movie, so really, it's a wash. This may be the only other Best Picture Oscar contender I'll be able to get to before the ceremony, so I've got to make it count. As I've said before, I'm interested in seeing the others, like "Bohemian Rhapsody", "A Star Is Born" and "BlacKkKlansman", but I feel like this one is the most urgent, I can get to all the others later. And if I've only seen 2 out of 8 Best Picture Nominees (this one and "Black Panther"), I'm OK with that, 25% is still very good for me.
Steve Carell carries over from "Battle of the Sexes".
THE PLOT: The story of Dick Cheney, an unassuming bureaucratic Washington insider who quietly wielded immense power as Vice President to George W. Bush, reshaping the country and the globe in ways that we still feel today.
AFTER: Now part of me is wishing I'd held off on this film, because I've been working on assembling all of my documentaries into a coherent chain, and so far only 17 of them are linking up together. If I'd known which celebs and politicians had appeared in the archive footage in this film, I think I could have gotten that up higher, at least to 20. Well, I can't unwatch this now and drop "Beautiful Boy" into its place, so I'm just going to have to work something else out come July.
But hey, this also works here - movie based on true events, large cast of actors with many cameos, and some actors that end up looking like their real-life counterparts, while others, hmm, not so much. The make-up work done to make Christian Bale look like Dick Cheney is ah-MAZE-balls, plus the actor has the voice down, Cheney's rhythm and pauses are spot on. Though my wife wanted to know why Cheney here was talking "like Batman". Carell as Rumsfeld is a solid choice, as is Amy Adams for Lynne Cheney, but then when you get to some of the lesser parts, like George H.W. Bush, who's only in one scene, it seems they just couldn't find a good look-alike for the part. Casting Tyler Perry as Colin Powell is inspired, though, and the woman playing Condoleeza Rice also had a strong resemblance. But then, Bill Camp as Gerald Ford had only a passing resemblance.
But I have to champion this film because it supports what I've been saying for years, that Dick Cheney was really the man in control during the Bush Jr. administrations, wielding more power than the President, and that W. was nothing more than a figurehead, a President in name only who just wanted the prestige and make his father proud of him, plus the benefits of traveling around the world on the country's dime and eating at state dinners and such. Now, why would Cheney participate in such a scam, if he believed, as most do, that the Vice Presidency was a useless, thankless, nothing-burger of a job? Ah, but as this film points out, Cheney didn't have the polling numbers to be President, plus his gay daughter was a potential media talking-point hazard, so the VP job was literally the next best thing, plus he'd be one heartbeat away from being President himself.
And, as depicted in this film, he could make a deal with George W. Bush to handle the boring, day-to-day matters, like, say, foreign policy. And domestic policy, overseeing the military, the economy, energy, all the mundane stuff - which, taken together, meant he'd be running the country while W. took the credit and made all the appearances and travelled around the world. What's that statement about absolute power again? Through some neat little legal loopholes, Cheney's lawyer also determined that since the Vice-President is in charge of overseeing the legislative branch and breaking ties in the Senate, as a result he's part of two branches of the government, and ultimately responsible to neither (I suppose that's one interpretation...).
Look, government conspiracies are everywhere these days, both real and imagined. The latest one I saw on the web concerned the "secret envelopes" that were given out at the George H.W. Bush funeral, because people who watch C-Span had nothing better to do than to pause the televised footage and figure out which important people got envelopes in their programs. Why did Michelle Obama get one, but not Barack? Why did the Bidens get an envelope, and why did Laura Bush pass one to Jeb? More importantly, what was inside? Theories have ranged from subpoenas or indictments to a note about Dubya's failing health. But people ignored the simplest explanation - after a funeral the family of the deceased could invite friends over for a light meal, maybe some coffee and pastries, to thank them for their attendance. So that's probably what it was, and you can imagine that when the guests are ex-presidents and former first ladies, there's probably a need to be discreet. They probably all met up at some well-protected location, like a coffee shop or meeting room in a federal building, then they read the Illuminati oath aloud, drank the blood of three virgins and did unspeakable things to Thomas Jefferson's skull. See, no big conspiracy at all...
But the Cheney things are for real - like how he was a drunk loser working on a road-crew until his wife told him he had to turn his life around, so he figured he'd go where all the dirtiest dirt-bags end up, Washington D.C. He started as an intern for Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, who became an economic advisor to President Nixon - but after seeing the meeting for the secret bombing of Cambodia, Rumsfeld fell out of favor and was sent abroad, so Cheney was also on the outs, but only until Watergate and Nixon's resignation. Rumsfeld came back to work for Gerald Ford as Secretary of Defense, since he wasn't tainted by the scandal, and Cheney became Ford's Chief of Staff.
He was on the outs again during the Carter years, but became Wyoming's U.S. Representative during the Reagan years, and supported all of the pro-business, pro-fossil fuel legislation, while voting against every nice like protecting endangered species and ensuring clean water, etc. etc. Cheney served as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush - remember Gulf War I? But another Democratic President sidelined him again, so he was forced to slum it in the corporate world, making millions as CEO of Halliburton. That's when he made the deal with Bush the younger to "find him his VP", but really, how hard did Cheney look, when he secretly wanted the job (and all the power) for himself? This is illustrated in the film with a fishing metaphor, baiting the hook, then teasing the prey, sinking the hook and reeling it in. He just had to figure out what Dubya wanted, and then pretend like it was Dubya's idea to select him when he said he could provide it.
(Part of this diabolical plan, lying in wait while supposedly looking for the right man to be Bush's vice-president, then stepping in at the last minute, meant that Cheney never went through the proper vetting process, never had to divulge his income or show his tax returns, or answer the questionnaire that all of the other candidates for the position had to fill out. Never had to put his Halliburton earnings and stock in a blind trust while serving as VP, and never got called out for BLATANT conflicts of interest...)
From that point, the scandals come at us faster than we can process, which is a little reminiscent of the current Trump administration - we can barely wrap our heads around the stupid thing Trump did or said yesterday, when there's a new one to deal with today. Only Cheney's things were all mean-spirited or downright EVIL, not just stupid. Invading Iraq with very sketchy information about WMD's and ties to 9/11. The Valerie Plame affair. Allowing the bombing of Afghan civilians and re-defining torture as "enhanced interrogation" in order to make it legal. Guantanamo Bay. Wiretapping ordinary citizens. And let's not forget he shot his friend Harry Whittington in the FACE while hunting birds. I wish the film could have dug a little deeper into that last one, because WTF happened? Did it happen just because Cheney was too lazy to get out of the car, or did he have some grudge against his "friend"? And why did the shot guy have to publicly apologize to Cheney, and not the other way around? It boggles the mind...
Throughout it all, there are the heart attacks - and I remember at one point, Cheney was being powered by some artificial heart, so for a while our country had like a cyborg VP, or to put it another way, this man literally and figuratively had no heart. But I guess eventually they found a donor so he could continue on doing his "important work". Geez, it would be nice if accidentally giving him some liberal or compassionate donor's heart could have made a difference in his personality, right? Too bad the human body doesn't work that way.
The film plays a little fast and loose with the rules, much like this directors previous film, "The Big Short" did, by breaking the fourth wall and being super-aware that it's a movie, and playing with those conventions. There are plenty of in-jokes, like having Naomi Watts appear as a newscaster, which is no doubt a nod to her portrayal of Valerie Plame in "Fair Game".
At one point there's a false ending where things appear to work out for the best, but of course it goes a little overboard with the hopey-changey stuff, so we figure out pretty quickly that it's a bunch of B.S., and the happy ending was never going to come. Instead Bale (as Cheney) looks right in the camera and explains how he stands behind every decision he made (and therefore every underhanded or evil thing he'd ever done) and had no regrets. Geez, that's chilling, it's like a Bond villain talking about his plan, but AFTER he'd blown up the world, and not before. If Bale wins Best Actor for this, I think I'm pretty OK with that. And it's up for Best Make-Up, too, not to mention Best Supporting Actor and Actress.
I probably would have scores the film higher if it had stuck to a linear narrative, and not go jumping around through Dick Cheney's life like some modern Republican version of "Slaughterhouse Five". Still, I support what it had to say, because all through the Obama years, I wondered why nobody ever called this Cheney guy on the carpet, by, at the very least, prosecuting him for war crimes. I'd still like to hear a solid explanation on this.
Also starring Christian Bale (last seen in "Hostiles"), Amy Adams (last seen in "On the Road"), Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Mute"), Alison Pill (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Jesse Plemons (last seen in "Game Night"), Lily Rabe (last seen in "No Reservations"), Tyler Perry (last seen in "Gone Girl"), Justin Kirk (last seen in "Ghostbusters"), LisaGay Hamilton (last seen in "Lovelace"), Don McManus (ditto), Eddie Marsan (last seen in "Atomic Blonde"), Bill Camp (last seen in "Red Sparrow"), Stephen Adly Guirgus (last seen in "Birdman"), Matthew Jacobs, Adam Bartley, Kirk Bovill (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Jillian Armenante, Fay Masterson, Shea Whigham (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Joseph Beck, Paul Perri, Paul Yoo, Alex MacNicoll, Aidan Gail, Cailee Spaeny, Karolina Kennedy Durrance, Violet Hicks, with cameos from Naomi Watts (last seen in "Fair Game"), Alfred Molina (last seen in "Secret in Their Eyes"), and archive footage of Osama Bin Laden (last seen in "Seal Team Six"), Tony Blair, John Boehner (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Tom Brokaw, Jimmy Carter (last seen in "American Made"), Hillary Clinton (also last seen in "Seal Team Six"), Morton Downey Jr., Jane Fonda (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years"), Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Benito Mussolini, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Barack Obama (also last seen in "Seal Team Six"), Mike Pence, Jeff Probst, Nancy Reagan (last seen in "Long Strange Trip"), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Mr. T, Barbara Walters (last seen in "Whitney: Can I Be Me")
RATING: 6 out of 10 undisclosed locations
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