Highly Overrated But Still Good

A Brilliant Conflict

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Dull, and not very objective in its story-telling (like many Sean Penn movies). Apparently based on a true story, it would be good to know how much of it is actually true. You get the sneaky feeling that a (mostly) fictional back-story was added to an event, with a left-wing agenda.Too much time spent on minor details, and thus very slow-developing. Problem is, without all the padding, it would probably be less an hour long! Hardly a movie, then.Sean Penn is perfectly cast as the would-be assassin: I would always have picked him as the actor most likely to assassinate a Republican president. His performance, in keeping with the slow-moving pace of the movie, is stunted, frustrating and irritating.

This is a distinctly odd and downbeat biopic about a man who concocted a half-baked plan to kill President Nixon in 1974. Except that it isn't really about this at all. Despite the title and the fact that this event is all that the central character is famous for, the movie is actually about what it was that drove him to such a desperate and insane plan of action. Consequently, The Assassination of Richard Nixon is a psychological drama about a fragile man, unable to cope with his society.Sam Bicke is a failure in all aspects of his life. His wife has left him, while at work his boss looks down on him. He hates his job as a salesman in any case, as he is unable to embrace the requirement for lying in order to close a deal. As a result he tries to set up his own business - a mobile tire shop - using a small business program set up by President Nixon. When he tries to get financing he is self-destructively honest about his business ethics and the deal falls down. His application for finance is rejected and he starts to think that the President himself is ultimately to blame for this society of crooks. Hence, his mad endeavour to assassinate him.Bicke seems almost like an alien in his culture, unable to connect with people and not understanding the harsh realities of life. His idealism seems incredibly naive. The film examines why this attitude is considered so ridiculous though. I suppose it holds up a looking glass at the audience to ask why a man who only wants to be honest with others seems so strange and ridiculous. It's a very drab world that Bicke inhabits, reinforced by the beige washed out colours that seem to be everywhere. It's, therefore, a commendably uncommercial offering and is very much in a lower key. Although, there is room for the occasional moment of funny comedy, such as the scene where Bicke visits the headquarters of The Black Panthers and witlessly tries to join, suggesting they should rename themselves as 'The Zebras' in order to increase their membership by attracting disenfranchised white people such as himself.Sean Penn is outstanding in the complex and unglamorous role of Bicke. He is in every scene and he really convinces as the downtrodden man. It's really a testament to the brilliance of Penn's acting that he can pull of roles so completely different and disappear into them. The film itself is a definite success, albeit a bit of a downer.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon is a striking psychological drama that stars Sean Penn, Don Cheadle and Naomi Watts.It is based on the story of would-be assassin Samuel Byck, who plotted to kill Richard Nixon in 1974.It was directed by Niels Mueller. Sam Bicke is a salesman for an office-supply company whose life is slowly beginning to unravel. His job is going nowhere.His wife,Marie has left him.His boss keeps pushing self-help books on him that make a mockery of his state of mind. One of Bicke's few friends is Bonny Simmons, an auto mechanic, and together they come up with an idea for a tire shop on wheels.While neither has the money to finance the project, Bicke has learned of a program for small-business loans instituted by President Richard Nixon, which he's certain will come through for him. But Bicke is denied his loan, which dovetails with his increasing suspicion of the president's Vietnam policies and a sudden interest in the "by any means necessary" political activism of the Black Panther Party. Sean Penn brings this obscure failure back to life in a vivid portrayal of a madman in the making, a madman who had a date with a gun and history.Also,the movie manages something quite remarkable, both a compassion for Bicke's wounded sense of life's betrayals, and stark revulsion for the personal logic of his bloody remedy.Although it doesn't hit Taxi Driver's level, it's still a discomfiting look at a man determined to leave his mark on the world and only to become a footnote.

Niels Mueller's sole feature film director credit is this character study about tragic loner Sam Bicke (Sean Penn), a furniture salesman disillusioned with the dishonesty of the world he reluctantly inhabits. Loosely based on a true story, Mueller presents a convincing polemic on the back of bold characterisation. Forget subtexts and pregnant silences - Mueller's film is all about the power of expression.What it's not about is the assassination of Richard Nixon. I feel the title is not a sensible one - like Sam's slug-like boss (Jack Thompson), it's selling a different product. Do not expect a Jack Ryan-esquire heroic espionage thriller. This is, after all, the grimy Land of the Free of 1974, fed on a diet of Dickie Nixon promises and apocalyptic TV visions from Vietnam. Think Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation or Scorsese's Taxi Driver for its mood. But while those films may have lacked emotional warmth, The Assassination of Richard Nixon takes our anti-hero's plight almost into the realm of sentimentality. His scenes with his wife, Marie (Naomi Watts, with whom he memorably shared the screen in the previous year's 21 Grams), are an astonishing portrayal of the agonisingly pitiful.What seems at once like an exhilarating anti-capitalist diatribe turns into something far more moving: the fable of a lonely man. ("You miss me, don't you?" and "You love me, don't you?" he asks his ex-wife's dog - two things he cannot ask his ex-wife.) But also, fascinatingly, in the final reel Bicke is revealed to be not only deeply alone but deeply unhinged. When his brother (Michael Wincott - an excellent cameo) confronts him about a theft, Sam is forced to confront himself. Sam breaks down, becoming incomprehensible, ranting about racism, displacing responsibility for his crime onto the formless enemy of the honest man. Finally, he says sorry. This scene complicates Sam; it makes him human, not simply an alien observer of the troubled human condition.Disturbing, moving, cynical, slyly witty, and - horribly predictably - devastating.