"That's a nice-a donut."
Saturday, July 16, 2005
The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004)
The Assassination of Richard Nixon is based on a true story and documents the tale of Samuel Bicke, a down and out loser who has decided that he will exact revenge for his frustrations in life by hijacking an airplane and crashing it into the White House in order to kill R. Milhous Nixon. Sounds like fiction? Of course Bicke (Sean Penn) was not able to complete his mission... or rather "Byck", as the filmmaker's purposely changed the spelling of his name so that people would more easily make the comparison to another lost, deranged soul named Travis Bickle from Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
Director Niels Mueller's movie is set against the backdrop of the Watergate hearing, which are shown on television several times during the movie. Bicke is a furniture salesman, and a nice parallel is clearly drawn between the greedy, lying salesmen that he works with and the President. Bicke's boss even calls Nixon the best salesman in the world. Bicke hates what he is doing though; he has a conscience and hates lying to people. He eventually tells his story of why he did what he did via recorded cassette tapes that Bicke intends to mail to the Maestro, Leonard Bernstein (because he is the only one who would understand). This is shown near the beginning of the film, and then much of the movie is a flashback up to that point and voiceover narration from his recordings is used at times. The movie is sloppy and lazy in this regard; it could have done without it.
As Bicke, Sean Penn shows once again why he is Hollywood's finest actor working today. He is able to show an amazing array of emotions, including the anguish that goes along with a broken marriage and the terrifying - but scared - but behavior that he shows during his rampage. The movie is generally sympathetic to Bicke; he may be antisocial and bad in relationships, but seemingly has good intentions and has a string of bad luck. Clearly, though, he is also mentally unstable, and his life continues to tumble downward. Penn is also teamed with other very capable actors, including Don Cheadle as a friend of Bicke and Naomi Watts as his ex-wife, but the movie does not showcase them and their stories are eventually pushed under the rug.
With the idea of using an aircraft as a weapon, he sure was ahead of his time. Just imagine if he hadn't made a couple dumb decisions during his hijacking and had succeeded in his goal. Ultimately the film is a very solid character study. It generally succeeds in painting Bicke as not just a monster, but as a human being. He has dreams and wishes of his own, as well as problems and worries, just like most everyone else. I wouldn't call his story as good as Travis Bickle's, but it may be more interesting.
The Verdict: B.
Michael Bentley 8:29 AM
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