Vice (15A) ***
Bale morphs into the looks, shape and character of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, portraying him as a dark and conniving figure with a lust for control. But while Bale gives one of his best performances in a career littered with great performances, the film built around him is more problematic.
Adam McKay, who wrote and directly the satirical and funny and ultimately scathing The Big Shot, applies the same verbose approach here and the film is certainly rich in background and detail. But Vice feels more unfocused, and tonally it doesn’t have the same bite.
The movie shows how Cheney broke the mould when it came to mouthy, blustering Republicans with big personalities. Bale plays him as mild-mannered and softly spoken, a man who stayed in the wings and remained something of an enigma.
Many believe that Cheney, as Vice President to George W Bush’s leader in the White House, pulled a great deal more strings and wielded a lot more power than any of his predecessors in the same position.
McKay’s film certainly hammers home that theory, portraying him as a politician determined to call the shots, and not to let position - or for that matter, the law - get in his way.
We see that his wife, Lynne (Amy Adams) also shares his dry reserve and sense of steely ambition, and some scenes portray their schemes - even if at cost to family.
McKay sticks mostly to facts but also uses them, less successfully, to his own end. A good deal of attention is paid to how Cheney manipulated and took control of major military decisions as the horror of 9/11 took hold.
He also makes decisions that will have beneficial impacts on his friends in big business - particularly the oil industry.
Bale is terrific throughout, and he milks Cheney’s droll persona for all its worth, in particular during scenes where he suspects he’s having a heart attack, which become a comic punchline in the film. Ultimately though, the film is too scattershot - especially in the second hour - to effectively hit its satirical targets.
Cellar Door (15A) ***
Belfast actress Karen Hassan is strong in the lead role of this psychological thriller set around an original premise.
The horrors and traumas of life in a Magdalene Laundry loom large in filmmaker Viko Nicki’s thriller, a slow-burner which rewards viewers’ patience with an emotional twist.
Hassan is Aidie, a woman forced to relive past traumas from her life as she struggles to unravel the truth of what happened to her.
Aidie is convinced she became pregnant and gave birth to a child in a religious institution, and that that child was taken from her against her will.
But as the authorities are adamant that no such child ever existed, Aidie is forced to dig deep and revisit her past over and over.
While this scenario does become repetitious, Nicki and his cast build enough mystery and a sense of foreboding to hold your attention, building to a powerful finale.
