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Vice
Vice, released in 2018 and directed by Adam McKay, dramatizes the political career of Dick Cheney, tracing his rise from a struggling young congressional aide to one of the most powerful vice presidents in American history, and Christian Bale's transformative physical performance in the lead role won him a Golden Globe. The film's unconventional structural choices, including a fake mid-movie ending and direct fourth-wall-breaking narration from a mysterious narrator later revealed to have a specific thematic connection to Cheney's life, reflected McKay's continued interest in formally unconventional approaches to depicting serious political and economic subject matter. Vice's satirical, often darkly comedic tone toward its subject matter, while still grounding its narrative in extensively researched historical events, gave the film a tonal register distinct from more straightforwardly serious political biographical dramas. The film's release drew significant political controversy given Cheney's continued polarizing legacy, particularly regarding the Iraq War and expanded executive power during the George W. Bush administration, and Vice remains one of the more overtly satirical major studio political dramas of the 2010s.
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Frost/Nixon
Frost/Nixon, released in 2008 and based on Peter Morgan's stage play, dramatizes British talk show host David Frost's 1977 televised interviews with former President Richard Nixon, the first extensive interviews Nixon gave following his resignation over the Watergate scandal. Frank Langella's performance as Nixon, capturing both the former president's calculated political guardedness and moments of genuine, unguarded vulnerability during the interviews, earned him an Academy Award nomination and is widely regarded as one of the finest screen portrayals of Nixon ever filmed. The film builds its dramatic tension around the real interviews' actual pivotal moment, in which Frost finally extracted an unprecedented direct admission of wrongdoing from Nixon regarding Watergate, a genuine historical exchange that the film treats with the structural tension of a climactic boxing match. Frost/Nixon's focus on a televised interview as its central dramatic set piece, rather than a courtroom or campaign trail, gave the film a distinctive structural approach to political drama, built around the specific power dynamics of broadcast journalism confronting political accountability.
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