A Controversial Christian Bale Movie Is Dominating Netflix
A Christian Bale movie, that's been somewhat controversial, is moving up the streaming charts. It's currently in the Top 10 on Netflix
This article is more than 2 years old
Christian Bale has made a career in Hollywood being able to play nearly every role imaginable. He’s been a psycho killer, a caped crusader, a hedge fund investor, a leader of the resistance against the machines, a machinist, cowboys, soldiers, drug addicts, and the list goes on. It’s one of the reasons he’s about as sought after as anyone else in the industry, seemingly able to method act his way into any role, as well as transform his body completely when the need arises. It’s something he did when he starred in 2018s Vice, a flick steadily moving up the Netflix charts right now, sitting in the Top 10 on the platform.
In Vice, Christian Bale takes on a rather unlikely role, one that has him looking unlike anything the actor has really done before. In the movie, he plays Dick Cheney, the former Vice President of the United States (among a variety of political appointments) in a story about the controversial figure’s life and ideology. If you don’t recognize Christian Bale in this one, it’s not just you. Great efforts went into making him look much more like the actual guy and less like his typical appearance. There’s an almost uncanny valley feeling to the whole experience, but Bale is able to pull it off.
Vice follows Christian Bale as Dick Cheney through different parts of his life in an effort, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, to drill down on how exactly he rose to so much political power in the first place. It starts with an early look at his relationship with wife Lynne and his struggles to find his way after dropping out of Yale. But he ends up in the White House during the Nixon presidency, ultimately figuring out how to manipulate and maneuver through the swamp in order to gain more and more political power along the way. Check out the trailer for Vice and see if you can even recognize Christian Bale.
Vice comes from Adam McKay who directed and wrote the movie as well. It’s meant to take a darkly comedic approach to Dick Cheney’s life, portraying the prominent political folks as either narcissistic angle shooters or bumbling fools (sometimes both). While presenting itself as the “untold true story” of Dick Cheney’s life, there’s an almost cartoonish villain component to how Christian Bale plays the character, clearly done on purpose because of McKay’s own political bent. Though, based on what we know about Cheney, and what happened with him throughout the years, it’s likely not too far off course either.
Joining Christian Bale in Vice is a stacked cast, something Adam McKay has been able to pull together throughout many of his films. Amy Adams is on as wife Lynne Cheney, the cheerleading frontrunner. Sam Rockwell plays George W. Bush, portrayed here has mostly as a daddy’s boy longing to live up to his father’s expectations. And Steve Carrell plays Donald Rumsfeld, another cartoonishly evil dude in this flick. Other notables include Tyler Perry as Colin Powell, with Alison Pill and Lily Rabe as Cheney’s daughters Mary and Liz.
Vice didn’t perform all that well at the box office, scoring just $76 million on its $60 million budget which isn’t all that surprising considering the somewhat polarizing nature of the content. It would be hard to see something like this with such divided political leanings performing well with all American audiences. And critics weren’t over the moon about it either. It’s sitting at 65% on Rotten Tomatoes.
While most were in agreement that Christian Bale knocked it out of the park with his own individual performance for the character, many thought the film lacked nuance. There was a hammer-over-your-head quality to the story that wanted to set an agenda early and often. This was off-putting to a certain number of critics when it was all said and done.
As for the real Dick Cheney’s reaction? Well, Christian Bale says that a message was passed along to him, through a parent at his son’s school in which Cheney wanted Bale to know the latter was, “a dick.” In the end, Christian Bale was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, though lost to Rami Malek’s turn in Bohemian Rhapsody.
Next up we’ll see Christian Bale in Thor: Love and Thunder when he plays the film’s villain, Gorr the God Butcher. It will be just another in a long line of characters for the actor. And maybe not too dissimilar to Dick Cheney.
