Review: "Vice"

“Vice” comes not to illuminate, but eviscerate. Unlike other portraits of powerful men in the WHite House (“Nixon,” “W.”), there is no attempt to show nuance or pursue inquiry. The reason this film exists is to condemn former Vice President Dick Cheney, to call him out as an evil and corrupt man.

There’s nothing else to call it but a hatchet job. It’s a well-made, splendidly acted one, caustic and occasionally quite funny. But let’s call a spade a spade.

Three years ago writer/director Adam MacKay made “The Big Short,” which I marveled at its ability to be so angry and so funny at the same time. “Vice” does the same, although the proportions are way out of whack.

The thing people will talk most about is the transformation of Christian Bale. And it’s a knockout. The tall, lean actor of “Batman” is so physically and vocally spot-on as the late-middle-aged, bald and portly Cheney that they barely even needed to superimpose Bale’s image into historical photos and footage.

His Cheney is a growly bear of a man, one who speaks in a guttural monotone punctuated with odd pauses. He’s obsessed with power, gaining it and using it.

The portions covering his early life are rather flat and sketchy. Amy Adams plays his wife, Lynne, a powerful woman who demands that he reform his wayward path. After failing out of Yale, he became an electrical lineman in Wyoming who racked up two DUIs. But he turned things around, earned college degrees and became a congressional intern, eventually allying with a young Congressman named Donald Rumsfeld.

If Bale’s Cheney is the film’s dour yang, then Steve Carell’s exuberantly mercenary Rumsfeld is the giddy yang. Together they would move up to Nixon’s White House, and then become the youngest Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff, respectively, under the Ford administration.

The story bounces around in time somewhat, with Cheney’s relationship with former President George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell) as the framing device. Like other Hollywood movies, “Vice” portrays the 43rd president as a bumbling yokel out of his element in the corridors of power. The Machiavellian Cheney sees this as his chance to remake the office of the vice presidency from a ceremonial BS job into a locus of dark, secretive power.

Much of MacKay’s story is taken from the historical record, but overlaid with a heavy slathering of showbiz razzmatazz that often crosses the line into outright mean-spirited fabrication. For instance, the controversial “outing” of CIA agent Valerie Plame is shown to be done explicitly at Cheney’s orders. (Even though a State Department official, Richard Armitage, admitted that he inadvertently slipped the info to columnist Robert Novak.)

Rather than just show Cheney to be a bad guy, MacKay goes for the whole hog: declaring that the blame for much of our problems today, from ISIS to the concentration of wealth, can be laid at Cheney’s feet.

The movie repeatedly throws up titles about the “unitary executive theory,” a bit of legal doctrine embraced by Cheney that has been interpreted by some to mean the president essentially has the powers of a dictator. There’s even a furtive flashback to the 1970s with a young Antonin Scalia, later a conservative stalwart on the Supreme Court, first introducing Cheney to the concept.

In the end “Vice” plays out as a conspiracy theorist’s dream, intercutting horrible war footage and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners with Cheney clomping along the hallways of the White House. I swear there’s even a snippet of the recent California Camp Fire in there -- I guess that’s Cheney’s fault, too?

It’s fine to loathe Dick Cheney and even make a whole movie to that effect. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good. Despite the masterful performance by Bale, “Vice” plays as a venomous takedown of a personality-challenged right-winger Hollywood loves to hate.

I didn’t have any particular sympathy for Cheney going into the movie, but it stacks the deck so badly I did afterward.

Review: "Alex Cross"

An aggressively dumb drama/thriller, "Alex Cross" clumsily retraces the steps of other movies about lawmen hunting down depraved serial killers who taunt them along the way. With its simplistic characterizations and clunky dialogue, it makes you think of  "Se7en" or "In the Line of Fire" as remade by a bunch of 15-year-olds ... and not particularly talented 15-year-olds.

Morgan Freeman played the role of Alex Cross, a brilliant African-American psychologist/detective, in a pair of middling 1990s adaptations of the novels by James Patterson.

Tyler Perry has a less intellectual, more visceral take on the character. That's a great idea in theory, but his ham-fisted performance results in a guy who seems all over the map -- hot and cold, a paragon of righteousness one minute, a rule-busting vigilante the next. He doesn't seem so much a person as a conflation of emotional highs and lows.

Perry, known for putting on a dress as the wild-and-crazy grandma Madea in a string of comedies he wrote and directed, just isn't convincing in a grim lead role. The audience in the preview screening I attended tittered several times at moments that were intended to be serious.

They also were amused by his, ah, ample physique struggling through a number of fight scenes. Director Rob Cohen doesn't help, resorting to the usual hackery of quick edits, tight framing and a shaky camera. The final showdown between Cross and the villain should be enshrined in film schools everywhere as how not to shoot an action scene.

Speaking of that villain -- Matthew Fox is the film's one redeeming quality as Picasso, a mysterious killer who's a hired assassin but clearly relishes his gruesome trade more than a cool professional would. Looking like every ounce of fat has been boiled off his lean frame, Fox flashes a death's-head rictus grin that is truly unsettling. He seems like he wants to shiver his way out of his own skin.

The character's backstory is never really explored -- we see a newspaper clipping that says something about a rapist, and Picasso (he's never otherwise named) repeatedly blames Cross for turning him into what he is. But the screenplay by Marc Moss and Kerry Williamson doesn't follow through.

Their transcendently awful dialogue is truly something to behold. It's as if every time the characters are faced with a situation somebody asked, "Now what's the most obvious thing he/she would say here?"

For instance, when Picasso applies his sordid trade to Cross' family and he starts gearing up for revenge, his mother (Cicely Tyson) lectures him: "Look at you! Self-appointed judge, jury and executioner!"

Secondary characters are strictly by-the-numbers, like Edward Burns as Cross' laconic partner/best friend, the scrappy supportive wife (Carmen Ejogo) and the smarmy corporate types who sneer at the cops even as the lawmen protect them from being carved up by Picasso.

A bundle of clichés wrapped in heaping helping of awful sauce, "Alex Cross" is a total flop as Tyler Perry's crossover to serious moviemaking. Better dust off that oversized dress.

1.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Precious"

Lately it seems major films are being pushed onto video in a slipshod manner. Extras are skimpy and unenlightening, as if the studio couldn't be bothered to take the time or spend the money.

(Yeah, I'm talking to you, "Where the Wild Things Are.")

So it's refreshing to see Best Picture Oscar nominee "Precious" given a top-notch release. It's got a solid commentary track and host of probing featurettes totaling nearly an hour. About the only knock is the lack of a digital copy.

Extras are identical for DVD and Blu-ray versions. In the commentary, director Lee Daniels talks openly about his own troubled youth and how it inspired him during the shooting.

Author Sapphire speaks about her experiences as an inner-city teacher, and how she was reluctant to let Hollywood film her book. She relented after seeing Daniels' "Monsters Ball."

The casting of novice Gabourey Sidibe is covered in detail, including footage from her audition. Sidibe is nothing like her character -- she's smart, outgoing and "talks like a white girl," Daniels says.

Daniels talks about de-glamorizing his cast, making nearly everyone work without makeup -- he even reveals he caught Mariah Carey trying to sneak in some blush between takes.

Oprah and Tyler Perry talk about their roles in "presenting" the film. Artistically, they had nothing to do with it. But after seeing it, they felt compelled to lend their names to get the Sundance favorite a major release.

Set in Harlem 1987, it's the first-person story of Claireece "Precious" Jones, an obese, illiterate 16-year-old who's pregnant with her second child. She's the victim of her mother, a serial abuser, played with terrifying rage by Mo'Nique, and was raped repeatedly by her father.

She's like a thousand others girls that people pass on the streets every day without seeing. Her entire life has taught her to feel worthless, like "ugly black grease."

But Precious is given a second chance when she's sent to an alternative school, where she finds a teacher and fellow female students who help her, for the first time in her life, to feel empowered. The vibrant fantasies that ping around her head start to translate into the journals she keeps for class.

"Precious" is a hard movie to watch. The brutality it depicts, of both a physical and psychological nature, are vile. The only thing worse would be failing to see it.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 3.5 stars