Review of Vice (2018) by Tarekali — 09 May 2022

One of the best biopics I have seen in a while. Christian Bale delivers an outstanding performance as the most powerful vice president in American history, and perhaps the darkest shadow behind the throne in a century.

Every mannerism and tic of Dick Cheney is replicated in an eerie fashion, including the cold glare of hard steel eyes. The rest of the star studded cast delivers very effectively, recreating iconic figures that shaped the bridge between American centuries of rise and fall, and to this day impact our lives in ways we can and cannot imagine.

Vice is absolutely essential viewing for anyone interested in studying inflection points of history, where a series of determined decisions can lay the tone for a century to come. Trump did not fall out of the sky, he rose from the ashes of the Cheney administration.

The ground work was well laid in the form of alternative facts, subversion of law and order and unilateral decision making. The concept of the all powerful, unassailable unitary executive is now the modus operandi of many an aspiring dictator all over the world, the age of democracy is ending.

I lived through those precedent shattering days and well remember the internal fear. More insidious is the results of the lies - a destabilized middle east and the resulting geopolitical aftershocks reverberating in Yemen and Ukraine; a collapsing climate with a brutal outlook for most of humanity; a demolished series of walls between executive, judiciary and legislative leading to utter injustice and chaos.

This ongoing century of American decline can be traced back to Vice and its depicted decisions, setting the course of the world for a new era.