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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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The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate, released in 1962, follows a Korean War veteran secretly brainwashed by Communist forces to become an unwitting assassin, and the film's Cold War-era paranoia about foreign infiltration and psychological manipulation reflected genuine contemporary American political anxieties of its era. The film's release came shortly before the actual assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and star Frank Sinatra reportedly pushed to have the film withdrawn from circulation for several years afterward given the uncomfortable real-world parallels to its assassination plot, though the film was later rereleased to renewed acclaim. Angela Lansbury's performance as the assassin's manipulative, politically ambitious mother, secretly working with Communist agents, won her an Academy Award nomination and remains widely regarded as one of the most chilling villain performances in American political thriller history. The film's 2004 remake, updated to reflect post-Cold War political anxieties around corporate influence rather than Communist infiltration, demonstrated the story's flexible thematic adaptability, and the original 1962 film's paranoid political thriller sensibility directly influenced numerous subsequent conspiracy-focused political dramas.
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