Vice

Being Australian and under 30, Dick Cheney is not someone I ever payed a lot of attention to. I knew he shot that dude and the dude he shot is the one who had to apologise somehow, and that he was one of the evil puppet-master types who stood behind George W. That's it. So while Cheney as a subject matter isn't something I can say I care about, it's also not material that's old hat to me either. I ended up watching it only because that's what my mate wanted to do for his birthday, but I'm glad I did. I did not love Vice, but for the sort of thing I don't normally gravitate towards, I was riveted.

Final rating: - I liked it. Would personally recommend you give it a go.

Pretty enjoyable, very funny, but doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know

We have guaranteed freedom, security, and peace for a larger share of humanity than has any other nation in all of history. There is no other like us. There never has been. We are, as a matter of empirical fact and undeniable history, the greatest force for good the world has ever known.

• Dick Cheney; Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America (2015)

As a non-American, I've always been fascinated by the concept of a two party system. Breeding rancour and division by its very nature, with only two sides from which to choose on any issue, the more controversial a subject is, the wider the ideological gap becomes. I'm not sure if it...

Vice (2018)

Direction: 8/10

Filmmaking: 7.5/10

Story: 8/10

Acting: 9.5/10

Entertainment: 8/10

Musical Score: 9/10

Final Grade: 8.3/10

Standout Performance: Christian Bale

Summary: Vice rises up against many of its competitors in the American Political genre of film as Director Adam McKay delivers a very informative, dramatic, and what I can assume to be as accurate as possible tale of Vice President Dick Cheney, and the George W. Bush administration.

Well, it's not at all hard to make Dick Cheney look like an evil man. Unfortunately this film goes a bit beyond that and comes across as completely and totally bias About ten minutes into the film, it doesn't seem like you are watching something as fair and critical as Stone's W, or even as critical as Liman's Fair Game.

Instead what you get is a film that, well, that feels like a hit piece from start to finish and it comes as a shock when the film ends and the director didn't take the opportunity to blame him for the Reichstag fire.

And, mind you, this is Dick Cheney we are talking about, a man that you can make out to be a monster without turning a film about him into a hit piece. So, when you get the sense that it's taking things a...

Christian Bale makes full use of his skills as an actor and of the prosthetics department to offer us an engaging, if largely speculative, account of the rise of Dick Cheney. A man of modest abilities at school, he managed to master and then to manipulate the American political establishment to the point where, elected vice-president, auteur Adam McKay would have us believe he was the de-facto ruler of the United States. It's interesting how this domino trail becomes established. The old school network putting, initially, the politically savvy Donald Rumsfeldt (Steve Carell) into a position able to advance the career of the increasingly ambitious Cheney. His wife "Lynne" (Amy Adams) is no slouch here, either - she shares her husband's quest...