The Assassination of Richard Nixon | Sean Penn, Naomi Watts

The Assassination of Richard Nixon | Sean Penn, Naomi Watts | "I was here, Maestro.."

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The Assassination ...

	The Assassination of Richard Nixon Sean Penn, Naomi Watts average customer review:based on 65 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A chilling drama that explores and exposes the dark side of the American Dream, The Assassination of Richard Nixon focuses on the tragic true story of Sam Bicke (Sean Penn), a disillusioned everyman who, in 1974, was driven to plot the assassination of the 37th president of the United States.

No place in the sun, just where toadstools grow

Imagine Neils Muller's directorial debut with Sean Penn as his lead actor! Also the co-scriptwriter, Muller must have had Penn in mind from the inception to recreate the deteriorating life of real-life Samuel Bycke, who in 1974 tried to hijack an airplane for the sole purpose of crashing into the White House and killing Richard Nixon.

Why? Therein lies the story. Bicke is one of those pathetic individuals who cannot succeed because of a personality disorder. That pathos eventually morphs into desperation. Lives of quiet desperation can easily turn into very noisy, very violent lives. This turn is equivalent to the relational stalker who kills his beloved rather than let someone else have her. A desperate man must do desperate things. At one point he feels so powerless, he attempts to join the Black Panthers.

Why Richard Nixon? Bick abhors dishonesty of any kind. When his boss, a furniture store owner, tells him Richard Nixon is the best salesman in the world, Bick records that information on his heart and mind. Nixon lied to get elected and reelected.

Forget Sean Penn's politics. When the man is on-screen, only his acting should be held accountable. In this role he plays the distorted, unstable personality who gradually descends into total alienation, inch by foot until he reaches the point of no return. The most stirring scene is Penn's cry of impotence and rage in a world where he has no place.

Did Mueller and Penn collaborate? Or did one man predominate? Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Their depiction of a man who loses his tenuous hold on reality is a minor classic.

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"I was here, Maestro.."

"The Assassination of Richard Nixon" is one of the more impacting films I've seen in recent years, but if you're not an admirer of psychological drama it's best to stay far, far away.

The tragic tale of Samuel Byck is deeply entwined with the anguish and outrage of the late 1960's and the still tense era of the early 1970's. An unemployed tire salesman who suffered from deep depression and could not succeed in any area of his life, he turned his sights on the powers that be, who were as hateable then as they are now: Tricky Dick was bombing anything on the map and Robert McNamara was lying as easily as he breathed. While Byck's problems were mostly personal, his documented conspiratorial "fantasies" about the government oppressing the poor don't seem too insane to me.

Penn gives a stunning performance as Byck sinks lower and lower into loneliness, disillusionment, and finally full blown madness. His inappropriate social affect, self consciousness, and the desolate conditions of his life (Naomi Watts plays perhaps the ultimate villain: Byck's icy girlfriend) all spill over into an assassination attempt and violent rampage.

There are moments in this film which are touching, albeit in an extremely sad way. At one point, Penn's Byck is determined to kill his boss for firing him--when he arrives at the restaurant sweating like a pig with a pistol concealed, his boss consoles him momentarily: "It was nothing personal. Here, take this, wipe yourself off. You okay?"

Though ultimately a murderer, Penn's compassionate performance sheds light on some of Byck's better qualities. At one point he is so determined to do something about the racial divide between whites and blacks that he bursts into a Black Panthers' meeting room, and encourages the leader to start a new group called: "Zebras". His treatment of his frequently abused black co-worker is a good example of what he might have been had he not chosen such a rageful response to a dismal state of affairs.

The movie is pretty bleak and the ending is even worse. Sean Penn just gets better and better as an actor, and he skillfully reflects all sides of this tragic and malevolent character. A must see!

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Underrated

I picked up a cheap used version of The Assassination Of Richard Nixon simply because I spent much of my youth listening to my dad yell at the 37th President during the years of the Watergate scandal, and figured that there might be some posthumous vicarious thrill that he could glean from my watching such a film with such a title. To my surprise, the film was not a cheesy exploitative film, but a latter day attempt to reframe some of the very same issues that Martin Scorsese's Travis Bickle dealt with in his 1976 film Taxi Driver, which ironically inspired a real life assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. Thus, this 2004 film, directed by newby Niels Mueller, and written by Mueller and Kevin Kennedy, is the closing of a circle that began with the real like case of Sam Byck, a 44 year old man who in 1974 tried to hijack an airplane and fly it into the White House. The post-9/11 relevance of this act, and this film's capture of it, is manifest. Not to mention that this tale of Bycke, renamed for the film's purposes as Bicke (to make it more closely resemble Bickle, as rumor has it that Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader named his fictive character after hearing of the Byck hijack attempt.... That this subtle, well acted, and well written political film was lost, and appears on a bare bones DVD with no features, while Michael Moore's mockumentary Fahrenheit 9/11 got Oscar buzz, only shows how dimwitted the American public is. The only slight negatives are the anachronistic use of modern airport technology, such as security equipment and moving walkway, and the last scene, which shows a still alive Sam playing with a toy plane- the attempted symbolism is muddy and superfluous. Overall, though, this is an excellent film. Early on, Sam moans that a man does not stop being a man when he's at his job. Equally true is that neither does he stop being a man when he's frustrated. Knowing the former does not prevent the latter, but it does allow a terrific film to be made in the interstice between the two.

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A Sean Penn master class

Sean Penn is a genuis at creating characters that are, on the surface, dislikable, repellent even, (see also 21 Grams and Dead Man Walking) but somehow their humanity shines through and you can't help but find yourself inside them, seeing the world from their viewpoint - and it's uncomfortable at times. In this movie, superficially at least, Samuel Bicke is a complete loser, utterly incapable of adjusting to the world around him. While those around him get on with it, his idealism derails him and, while his actions just make no sense logically, you can't help but feel sorry for him and compel him to snap out of it, to wake up, but in your head you know he's doomed. It's a remarkable portrayal of the dysfunctional idealist, a character that has had many manifestations in American popular culture, Holden Caulfield and Travis Bickle to name two others.

One interesting thing that comes through in this movie is that America at that time was a much more socially conservative place than today, and you can see that in Samuel Bicke's attitude to his wife working as a waitress, and the reaction of his boss to finding out that he is a divorcee. A small point, but worth mentioning, because often the setting of a movie in a time period has no real bearing on the characters or action, but in this case you get a real feel for the social values of that time, and credit to the script writers for that.

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Sean Penn's twisted catharsis at play.

Dearest Sean,

It's now clear to me that you need help, man. For years I've watched your angular cries for help as you've force-fed your politics and angst-ridden diatribes down an all-listening public's throat. And now comes this film, a sad little puddle of drivel and nihilistic brutality that is somehow supposed to reflect how angered you are at the government? We get it, Sean, and most of us agree, but The Assassination of Richard Nixon is really nothing the other great works of nihilism haven't offered us before, only a step down really in terms of a compellingly powerful story. This film is like watching a person slowly slice their wrists. We get it. Life is sucky. Bush sucks. The world sucks, and the doomed character you play here sings that sad music perfectly until he meets his ultimate fate at the end. But come on, man, give us something we can sink our teeth into. Give us some hope. Nihilism has played its part and has proven to illustrate nothing in terms of helping mankind. Give us films that makes us think for the betterment of the soul, not films that slice and dice our inner man to shreds.

Please get your perspective back online in a positive light, and stop preaching. We're not listening anymore.

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