Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) went from being kicked out of Yale for partying too hard to being arguably the most powerful man in the world as George W. Bush’s (Sam Rockwell) Vice President. Vice charts this path and attempts to show us how he got there and the impact we all still feel today as a result.

Adam McKay, the writer/director of The Big Short did a superb job of conveying incredibly complex information about the U.S. mortgage housing crisis in his last film. Here he attempts to perform the same trick with Cheney’s rise to power but seems to have bitten off more than he can chew. That’s not to say it is a failure, it’s just that at times Vice struggles to be an entertaining film in its effort to impart so much information.

The film uses similar framing devices as The Big Short to keep things fresh and add light comic touches. It moves backwards and forwards in time to connect linked events, has narrators inserted into the action whilst aware they are telling us a story and drops in known faces such as Naomi Watts and Alfred Molina to give us comic explanations of complicated information. Essentially it’s McKays attempt to keep us interested in a feature film rather than a documentary.

The beating heart of the film is Christian Bale’s performance as Cheney. Bale, as ever, is 100% committed to the role. Gaining weight, shaving his head and bleaching his eyebrows to look like Cheney. His mannerisms and speech patterns are also spot on and it almost feels painful to hear him talk as he seems to physically struggle with the weight. But the performance isn’t just the physical, it’s also full of depth in a man that seemingly loved his family as much as power.

Elsewhere the film is also improved by Amy Adams performance as Lynne Cheney, seemingly the driving force of his quest for power. And by the sheer volume of information being thrown at us. If even half of the information on show is true it paints a bleak picture of political power gathering.

Unfortunately it’s not all good though. The vast quantity of complex information makes it almost impossible to deliver it all in an entertaining fashion and at times it stalls. It also feels incredibly one sided, McKay clearly dislikes Cheney but perhaps that’s his prerogative given this isn’t a documentary. And there are a number of times when the films preference to hammer home a point by cutting to a fish being caught or a wild cat attacking feels incredibly heavy handed.

But for all it’s flaws, my mind keeps coming back to how good Bale is and how extraordinary some of the information in the film is.