“Vice,” the wholly unauthorized bio of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is an extremely well-made film. I support and believe everything in it.
That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a political hack job. Writer and director Adam McKay painted all Republicans as thoroughly evil. “Fahrenheit 11/9” creator Michael Moore points out Democrats can be malevolent, too.
Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were two of the most sordid vermin to infest the White House — until recently. Prior to seeing the film, I knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and had nothing to do with 9/11. The Iraq invasion Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated was McKay taking some cheap shots at George H.W. and George W. Bush. George H.W. was CIA director under Gerald Ford and, later, he did persuade the Iranians to hold onto the hostages until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, but he was basically too decent a man to be as devious as Cheney and Rumsfeld. George W. was just plain dumb.
I like multidimensional characters in life and films. Nobody’s all black or all white. There’s a lot of gray in the real world.
Fred Malo Jr.
Carbondale