Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Here's a monologue film based on a play written by Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone about the reasons behind President Richard Nixon's departure from the Office, the motives behind Watergate and lots of other random thoughts by one of the most notorious politics of America. "Secret Honor" is a great opportunity to watch Philip Baker Hall carrying a film on its entirely, directed by one of the greatest directors of all time, Robert Altman.In this fictional account, Hall plays a drunken/angry/mad/paranoid Nixon in all his forms, the man, the president and all, most of the time hiding his mistakes, blaming other people for them. All the distorted president's stream-of-consciousness is thrown on a recorder in which he keeps urging his aide Roberto to erase the most embarrassing and nastiest parts. The man rants about John Dean, Rockefeller, Kissinger, Eisenhower, his mom, the political networks called "The Bohemian Grove" and "The committee of 100" and their involvement with Vietnam War and Watergate. The trajectory of a simple man who became the most powerful, the man who lost his soul to gain the world to at the end lose it all is well evidenced when Dick tells in his tapes how he was a winner in life quoting something like this "I dream of failure that's why I succeed it." It's difficult to select his best moments on the film, there's so many. The film is extremely difficult to follow as stream-of-consciousness usually are, it's complicated to see someone else's mind and the way they think, specially a person like Nixon, haunted by his demons while in many moments of his life. The reason of why "Secret Honors" works is purely because of the character the writers decided to follow in his darkest and bittersweet memories. To me, Nixon resulted in one of the worst nation leaders to ever walk on Earth but on film he's a terrific film character in the countless portrayals ever filmed. Hall joins a gallery of great Nixon performers like Frank Langella in "Frost/Nixon" and Anthony Hopkins in "Nixon", two heavyweight dramas with solid acting from actors who played Nixon like a Shakespearian tragedy. And he is like those tragedies!In this one, Philip Baker Hall follows the same path James Whitmore walked in his Oscar nominated performance in "Give'em Hell, Harry", where he's the only actor on scene playing Harry Truman. Being the only and main force on a picture is extremely tough but Hall succeeds it, capturing all possible emotions inside of one persona, laughing, crying, shouting, babbling incoherent thoughts and words, cursing everybody and everyone. The play works because of him, way more than the drowsy text itself that among other things theorized about Nixon's escape from the Presidency in order to avoid more years of war to help his rich supporters getting drugs from Asia, and more years in the Office. His rant in the film's grand finale is amazing! Since the screenplay is often sliced in too many rants, not respecting a certain order for at least fifteen minutes presenting political figures and events all the time, this must be watched only by viewers who know Nixon's background, otherwise you'll be utterly lost. This screenplay issue bothered me in terms of tracking down Nixon's way of thinking, to put my own reflections on what he was trying to mean with what he was saying. Order and organization is my motto in visualizing an idea or a film and that's why it gets a quite low rating in my evaluation, it might change some day, on a new view. 6/10

Richard Nixon, a man known for many things, amongst which trying to reach out to the "silent majority" of America, while plunging the country further into war and getting into one of the big cover-ups of the nation, is given a character here. It's not necessarily the man altogether, but like Oliver Stone's Nixon, it's an interpretation given a blood-life by way of Donald Freed and Arnold Stone's script (which is maybe the 2nd best thing about the film), Robert Altman's peering, sometimes paranoid, but tight compositions, and Philip Baker Hall. This actor is one of the unsung masters of character acting, even when he sometimes can only just be 'himself' in the roles. Here his inhabitance, more than portrayal, of Nixon captures (as Antony Hopkins did in his own way) the soul of the man dead-on.It's a one-man film, so that Hall's work here has to be better than top-notch, it has to be engrossing. Nixon as a political being, family man, lawyer, and practically professional liar, are given shape here by his near-movie length confession into a tape recorder. This could be a tricky thing for Altman and Hall to pull off, but for pretty much the entire film they do. One thing I loved was how sometimes Altman would cut-away from his actor and get shots on Nixon on the security monitors installed in his office/room (where he spend the duration of the film in). There were also some very evocative, powerful shots of Hall as Nixon reflected against the window, this being even closer to Nixon- a ghost or some other entity- than Hall.But in the end, even for all that Altman could do (which is really just to let the camera roll and maybe give Hall a word or two when needed), it is really Hall who has all the credit going for him here. What works best about what he does here is the time he takes, how his acting is made almost like music- he'll speed up, get frustrated/angry/cynical in his own sometimes scrambled recollections of the past, then slow down in self-shame asking to erase parts of the tape (to whomever may be listening, if at all). Here is a man whom in real life was a smart man, but also paranoid to a fault, with as many personal demons as detractors, and who could always be counted on to be pushing forth a lie to the American public. Hall gives him life here, in this "fictional" account as a tortured, flawed, drunken leftover of days gone by. That sometimes it becomes even more moving than expected, and revelatory, makes it all the more clear why it still remains Hall's landmark in his career (among others, like in PT Anderson's films), and that for Altman it's dark, brooding, and like a Bergman film, does NOT make it's doomed subject into a one-dimensional being.

SECRET HONOR should be seen by everybody with an interest in Richard Nixon. It may not be what he was really like, but it is a weird and unforgettable portrait of this man. Philip Baker Hall delivers one of the best screen performances I can ever remember in this one man movie. The movie takes place on the day before Richard Nixon is going to resign, and sits around drinking scotch and yelling into a tape recorder about everything in his political life. He blames Castro, Kissinger and anyone named Kennedy for all the problems in his life- while never accepting resposibilty for any of it himself. He's a man entrenched in denial. The movie utlimately makes Nixon look like an idiot- a man who has no idea what he was doing. This is one of Robert Altman's best films- an utterly amazing film.

The best film ever made on Nixon, or any president. A film which is an entire monologue by Philip Baker Hall, one of the best character actors of our time. While, like Anthony Hopkins, he doesn't LOOK like Nixon, his performance helps you look beyond it. As he staggers around the oval office, cursing his enemies and talking to ghosts, staring into his monitors, you get the resonance of the real Nixon, and you even begin to feel sorry for him. It opens the myth of Nixon wide to reveal a man beneath the icon, and is a simultaneously thrilling and dramatic film. Altman's film has been out of print for at least a decade, but it far surpasses Oliver Stone's film and is worth watching for anyone who ever wanted to appreciate Nixon as anything other than a monster.