The woke-ening of Adam McKay started in a strange place: the closing credits of his 2010 Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg buddy-cop comedy The Other Guys. As the names of second unit directors and assistant location managers flashed across the screen, so did statistics and figures about government bailouts and hefty CEO bonuses in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. McKay later turned that PowerPoint presentation into 2015’s The Big Short, a scathing comedy about the crisis that earned him a Best Screenplay Oscar.
Now he’s made Vice, a total flex from an entirely self-assured filmmaker. A damning, decades-spanning portrait of former Vice President Dick Cheney, Vice is a far cry from the genial comedies McKay used to make, like Anchorman and Step Brothers. Instead, it’s an angry, messy, overbearing, and frequently brilliant film—one that’s indulgent in ways that are simultaneously admirable and irritating.