Had to go see the new Dick Cheney biopic today, entitled "Vice." It makes him out to be a monster.
Power hungry. Heartless. Manipulative. Willing to stretch the truth to get what he wants. And what he wants is absolute power in the Executive branch.
Christian Bale is excellent in the title role, as is Amy Adams as his wife Lynne. The guy who plays George W. is very believable. Some of the other characters -- since all of these characters are public figures and well known -- look and sound less like their real-life counterparts but overall the casting was at least in the ballpark.
There were a couple of unexpected laugh-out-loud moments in the middle of the movie. In one, Cheney has lost his job as Defense Secretary in the George H.W. Bush administration when Clinton was elected. He retires to a cushy job as CEO of Halliburton, settles down to a comfortable life, and raises golden retrievers. Titles on the screen indicate that the Cheneys find peace in their senior years and live a long and happy life. Credits role. The movie appears to be over.
Then a telephone call interrupts. It's W. calling.
In another, Cheney is meeting in secret, and against government regulations, with the heads of various energy companies to map out the country's new energy policy under W. In the scene, the faces of the energy company CEOs are blurred out and what they are saying is bleeped out.
At the beginning of the movie there is a screen crawl that says everything in the movie is true. They say it's extremely hard to do this, because Cheney was and is one of the most secretive elected officials ever, with no "public records search" and no "official papers" and no recordings or pictures. He did EVERYTHING in secret.
But, the filmmakers say, they "did their fucking best."
So, is Cheney a monster? Yeah, probably.
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