'Vice' review: Christian Bale, Amy Adams star in Dick Cheney biopic full of … itself

Adam McKay's restless Dick Cheney lament, "Vice," belongs to a sub-genre of recent political biopics one might characterize as "The Important, the Powerful and the Generally Pathetic," with the subjects embodying all three traits.

Oliver Stone's sneakily sympathetic George W. Bush inquiry "W." (2008, released while Bush was still in office) and Jay Roach's HBO teleplay "Game Change" (2012, with Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin) belong on that list. These movies are dialectical exercises, their makers - to varying degrees _unafraid to make their subjects