A standout lead turn from Christian Bale is one of the lone highlights from Vice, a messy exploration into the life & career of Dick Cheney that takes big swings from a southpaw position and is left spinning on its heels.

Vice begins with that usual statement that adorns all matter of film: “The following is based on a true story”. Then follows an interesting caveat: “But…”

That right there allows writer/director Adam McKay (The Big Short) some wiggle room to tell his own interpretation of history. Well, at least that is what he probably thinks. For while creative license is allowed for dramatic purposes, a biased recollection of historical accounts for political purposes is nothing more than propaganda. Anyone who knows McKay knows of his political affiliation. He wears it loudly and proudly. Yet even he must admit that his doing a movie on Dick Cheney is the same as a butcher doing a film on veganism.

And speaking of butchers, boy oh boy is Vice a mess. Clocking in at 132 minutes, McKay stuffs his quasi-biopic with all matter of cutaways and overwrought visual symbolism, which editor Hank Corwin (The Tree of Life) pieces together into a patchwork of smear and hyperbole. McKay presents all matter of conspiracy and circumstantial evidence into a shambolic and raving mad temper tantrum of a movie. Ever seen that image of a raving conspiracy theorist in front of a board filled with newspaper clippings, linked together with crazy red string? Vice is its movie equivalent.

A tacky and distracting use of narration is provided by Jesse Plemons, who plays the portrait of the “everyman” supposedly screwed over by Cheney’s cunning and almost supernatural wiles. Cheney is played by Christian Bale in a turn that sees the Oscar winning British actor at his transformative best. With weight pilled on, hair gone bald, and glasses in prime position, Bale’s performance truly is a sight to behold, even if McKay’s interpretation of Cheney as a “master of the universe” who was responsible for ISIS, profited from the Iraq war, brought on climate change, and even killed JFK. Ok, that last part isn’t true, but it would fit the narrative.

Throughout McKay props us his targets – George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell), Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), Fox News (in the form of Naomi Watts’ anchor woman), plus more – and fires at them with wilful abandon. Meanwhile the likes of Democrat President’s Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama are practically showered with a chorus of angels. Cheney’s numerous heart attacks are treated like comedy sketches.

It is hard to understand just what McKay was trying hard to achieve with Vice. He would no doubt state something along the lines of a “warning”, a “reminder of how if we don’t learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes in the future”. That is all well and good. But Vice should instead serve as a warning to filmmakers that if they have biases and contempt for their subjects, they are set to make a biased and contemptuous work, and a rather crappy one at that.