Hook, Line, and Sinker
or
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted...
"A year ago, my approval rating was in the 30's, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my Vice-President had just shot someone. Ah, those were the good old days..."
President George W. Bush at the 2007 Broadcasters Annual Dinner
"Never apologize. It's a sign of weakness."
Capt. Nathan Brittle She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
"Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth, I will never speak word."
The Tragedy of Othello Act 5, Scene 2
"There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions are actual resolve."
Richard Bruce Cheney
Once at work there was this guy that I just loathed. He didn't work much or very hard and would rather talk and boast than actually do anything resembling what he was being paid to do. His output wasn't that good, of course. So, to beef up his paycheck he started doing overtime, which meant that he was at work more and our schedules would overlap more. I didn't like that. I liked it when he wasn't there, causing issues.
The one day I could count on was Saturday. He didn't want to work Saturdays and would whine if anybody suggested it. That gave me one blissful day of work when I didn't have to deal with his shit. Then, one Friday he announced that he was going to work overtime on Saturday. I looked enthused. "Oh, you're going to love it! It's work-work-work, nose to the grindstone, and the supervisors really push us hard." He curled his lip as if I suggested he not take my last onion-ring. "That doesn't sound like any fun," he grumbled. And true to his goals, he didn't show up that Saturday.
The reactions I got from co-workers (of a similar opinion about this guy) was raised eyebrows, wide eyes, and a conspiratorial silence. They couldn't believe that I would turn his deficiencies and tendencies to my advantage and manipulate them into his deciding to not show up. Once he left the room, I took great pleasure in saying "I...am an evil son-of-a-bitch."
It's in moments like these that I know what it must be like to be former Vice-President Richard ("Dick" to his friends and "dick" to his enemies) Cheney, the very definition of "shadow government" during the George W. Bush Administration. Cheney would disappear for days, incognito, while W. stayed out in the forefront acting presidential, while Cheney would be in one of several offices he had squirreled around Washington doing God Knows What out of the scrutiny of the public eye...or the President's.
One of the weird by-products of the current Trump Administration is that, in comparison, the George W. Bush tenure looks pretty good—just as George H.W. Bush's Administration looked better in comparison to his son's. The things is, they weren't good by any stretch of the imagination. They're just better than the shit-storm we're going through now.
So, it's probably good that Adam McKay made Vice at this time, just to slap us around a bit in case we get too sentimental about water-boarding and freelance merc's as a business model. And slap around he does, sparing nobody, not even the shallowness of the American voter, in his study of Richard Cheney, a political operative who maneuvered himself into power whenever the Republicans were in the White House and served as a consultant to oil executives when they were not.
After an anonymous quote ("Beware the quiet man..."), McKay starts his bio-pic/screed with the 9-11 attacks, when Cheney (say what you will, but this is astonishing work by Christian Bale) is whisked away by Secret Service agents to a secure command bunker, along with other key White House advisers—like Condoleeza Rice (played by LisaGay Hamilton) and wife Lynne (Amy Adams) who has demanded of the Secret Service that she be taken there from a beauty salon—cloistered in the key moments of the planes hitting the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. POTUS Bush (Sam Rockwell—great work here) is in the air and (I know this from another source) frustrated by the spotty communications achievable on Air Force One in the midst of the crisis. At the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell) takes an order from Cheney that fighter jets are to be scrambled to shoot down any civilian aircraft still in the air. Rumsfeld questions whether it's approved by the President and Cheney, not having checked, says "Yes," puts down the phone and contemplates the question—as Michael Moore put it in Fahrenheit 9-11—"which of our friends screwed us."
There's a telling moment early one when a young Dick Cheney is working as a lineman in Wyoming, when a fellow worker falls and breaks his leg, badly. The guy is in obvious pain, going into shock, and a bunch of the workers gather around to observe. A foreman comes by and tells everybody to get back to work. Cheney hesitates and has to be told again to get back to work. No "we'll call an ambulance" or "the situation is handled" just "get back to work" and Cheney turns and does what he's told.
As a young man in Wyoming, wife Lynne is getting tough. She's had to bail Dick out of jail twice for DUI's and she's had enough. She's seen enough domestic abuse in her childhood that she's not going to go down that path in her own family. "This is not the man I intended to marry" she yells and a cowed Cheney vows he'll do better and change, but, as he makes his way to a government internship program, he develops another addiction to replace the alcohol, one that Lynne heartily approves of—power.
At a meet and greet, he sees a cocky, youngish up-and-coming functionary named Donald Rumsfeld, quite apart from the old men making up the majority of the speakers, and Rumsfeld spells out what it will take to succeed in three simple rules: 1) You don't go blabbing—keep your mouth shut; 2) do as you're told; 3) be loyal. Oh, and "if the wife calls, they're in a meeting." With those edicts, the interns become indoctrinated into the Old Boys' School of self-perpetuating power. Before he's done, Cheney will violate all of those rules.
McKay's film then outlines Cheney's career—first as Rumsfeld's assistant during the Nixon Administration, then gaining more access with Ford by circumventing the influence of Henry Kissinger and becoming Chief of Staff. When carter gained the White House over Ford, Cheney ran for Wyoming House seat, which he won, giving it up to be George H.W. Bush Secretary of Defense, then during the Clinton years, serving as CEO for Halliburton. When Bush's son, George W. ran for President, he wanted Cheney to be his Vice-President, but Cheney played shy until he could leverage more power concessions from the Veep job from the less experienced Bush by couching them as "mundane." Dull they may be, but they gained him access to in-roads of government to conduct his own form of cronyism and punishment.
McKay, who started as a writer—for awhile on Saturday Night Live—and as director of the Anchorman films and Talledega Nights, then upped his game on the impressive distillation of Michael Short's book The Big Short. That film was such a success, McKay tries to pull the same tricks, with black-out sketches—Dick and Lynne suggest Lord and Lady MacBeth with a brief Shakespearean sequence (that does not work), or a sequence where waiter Alfred Molina discusses what choices the Bush party have in violating civilian rights after 9-11 (rather clever way to look at it), and a lovely fake-out half-way through the movie (that's hilarious).
But, the through-line with the mystery narrator named Kurt (Jesse Plemons) is distracting throughout the movie and its pay-off is a bit precious when it wants to be hard-hitting. It's emblematic of an intention to be tough and cynical with a "just kidding" approach that doesn't do any help to the cause than be momentarily entertaining, which, along with the thrumming of a vague "fisherman" metaphor that McKay keeps pushing, keeps the film from ever seeming like more than a trifle with a sterling performance at its center.
One should stay until the end, though, because the film turns much braver in its final minutes, with a defiant Cheney breaking the fourth wall of an interview to admonish us all in the audience from being too self-satisfied and smug in our criticism, and a mid-credits sequence in which an opinion focus group ("What DO we believe?") falls apart into fractious chaos about...the movie itself, then throws out a last damning line about audience's tastes and priorities...that may be the core point of the movie all along. And its most damning one.
If it's not there to just "go out' on a laugh.
No comments:
Post a Comment