Vice stars Christian Bale, who becomes Dick Cheney, one of the most famous US Vice Presidents in history. Adam McKay, the director of one of the most incisive and entertaining American films, The Big Short, directed this biopic period piece, whose runtime is two hours twelve minutes. If you liked The Big Short, then you should definitely check out Vice, which uses the biography of one important man as a way to explore the state of our world today and is almost as strong as McKay’s last movie.

I usually don’t see movies about something that I have lived through, which is why I didn’t see The Big Short in theaters, but I’m not going to make that mistake twice. The exception is if Adam McKay directed the film. He suddenly shifted gears and reinvented the trajectory of his career from directing Will Ferrell, who helped produce this film, in comedies such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, The Other Guys and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues to important dramas worthy of accolades about serious topics while retaining a sense of humor and an innovative editing montage style that acts as a visual metaphor to provide additional psychological and emotional insight into the events as they unfold instead of having a character’s thoughts appear as audio and bringing the movie to a halt. It is a dynamic way of using an unspoken, shared visual vocabulary to the screen to add texture to his films. For instance, Cheney’s early verbal dance with W is interspersed with fly fishing images. W is the fish.

I would not be surprised if McKay really wanted to make documentaries, but realized that no one watches them, and he still wanted to financially support his family. Remember that Joan Rivers always wanted to be a serious actor. Instead he cracked the code by making docudramedies. The docudramedy fills the cast with well-known, box office, solid actors. The approach is superficially light and relatable, but when it gets serious, he offsets the gravity by poking fun at the scenario. He regularly breaks the fourth wall by openly acknowledging the limits of veracity in his cinematic depiction of the subject while simultaneously spoofing other movies’ attempt to create a seamless narrative. It is a brilliant concoction that continues to work in Vice if it didn’t go on a smidge too long. I think that his sense of horror and urgency at the devastation wreaked by casual cruelty in halls of power resulted in one too many editing juxtaposition of the decorous understated commands with their effects.

I am surprised that more critics didn’t get or like Vice. It is perhaps slightly less approachable than The Big Short because the narrative isn’t linear, and they are eager to get to the good stuff, i.e. his years as VP, while complaining that there is little insight to the man. The reason that we need to know about his lost years is to explain his motivation, love and approval from a child terrorized by power and haunted by thwarted ambition, his style as an intellectual willing to punch you in the face and curse you the hell out if you look at him sideways and how he was able to have such a good working relationship with a man that he bamboozled—he was him. If you don’t love him at his nadir, then you don’t deserve him at his apex. Chronicling his steady climb to power is necessary to show how he honed his skill at making outrageous ideas sound reasonable and developing his resume as a dependable servant of power who is willing to do anything.

I actually love Dick Cheney like nerds love Darth Vader. If you’re going to be evil, be effective. You don’t realize the numerous ways that he screwed you over until long after. He first caught my attention when he was in charge of W’s search for a vice president then found himself! After 9/11, I did not miss the interview that he gave ABC when he admitted that he gave the order to shoot down planes! How do you shoot someone in the face, but he apologizes to you!?! He is old and unhealthy so how did he shoot to the top of the donor recipient list to get a heart. Sadly the movie omits supposition on that detail. Vice works because it shares that same begrudging respect and horror at the political equivalent of Michael Myers who will never stop or die. You just don’t get artisanal, well-crafted evil like that anymore, and if he has his finger in Presidon’t’s poorly made mudpies, we won’t know until the statute of limitations runs out. I love you, Cheney! (Don’t hurt me.)

Vice actually left me more retroactively impressed by revealing details that I never knew about his White House years. McKay ends on a down note, which may explain the lack of enthusiastic reception to this film, by laying a lot of the world’s evils at Cheney’s feet. This didactic, ambitious summary made McKay’s motives more transparent than The Big Short, which ends with men emerging as winners in the financial apocalypse. There is no sense of triumph at the end, and people hate that. I like a bleak ending, but I’m not the average viewer. The average viewer was having a great time laughing and skipping like a stone on the watery surface of history just to plummet at the end. It may be honest, but it doesn’t make people happy. McKay’s movie also acts as a critique of the American consumer unwilling to tackle thorny issues and preferring superficial diversions. Vice feels like the soul brother of I Am Not Your Negro as both films are horrified by Americans as moral monsters, oblivious to causing others’ suffering as long as they are happy.

If Bale and Merryl Streep had a baby, would that baby rule over other actors like a tyrant or patiently act as a benevolent mentor to those actors casually imparting acting knowledge that was effortlessly gleaned from superior DNA? It was brilliant to cast Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney. It makes audiences subconsciously associate this film with other movies that Bale and Adams were in, The Fighter and American Hustle, which achieved critical acclaim, but were directed by David O. Russell, who has less ambitious, but more well-received movies under his belt. Adams hasn’t played such an unlikeable character in film since Nocturnal Animals, and I loved her performance as the head of the fifty-two percent, unquestioning loyal to power and ambition, oblivious to the fact that power dynamics were at the source of her early problems.

I highly recommend Vice with the caveat that the ending is a downer, and if that element is a deal breaker, then skip it. You should also see it when you’re alert otherwise the story may lose you though I had no problem following it, and I saw the last showing on a Friday night after being up and about since 6 AMish. It is an amazing movie, and it affirms my decision to see McKay’s films in the theater.