The Assassination of Richard Nixon
by Niels Mueller
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Brad Henke, Don Cheadle, Jack Thompson, Naomi Watts, Sean PennDirector: Niels Mueller
Brand: NEW Line Home Video
Writer: Niels Mueller
Writer: Kevin Kennedy
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-04-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line Home Video
Movie Reviews of The Assassination of Richard Nixon
Movie Review: Remarkable performance by Sean Penn
Summary: 5 Stars
[Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.]
The movie is an intense focus on Sean Penn doing a sympathetic character study of a nut job named Samuel J. Bicke, a failed salesman who manages to lose at everything he does. He is a salesman who believes you shouldn't lie to make a sale. The only thing more ridiculous would be a lawyer who believes you shouldn't lie to win a case. I had a friend once who was a bit of a nut job like Bicke who said he never lied. To maintain this fiction he lied to himself. It was the only way he could continue to think he never lied. Such ideas ("a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"--from Thoreau--is ironically similar) are the stuff of inflexible minds unable to adjust to the vagaries of humanity and to a world that is not rigidly set in black and white. Bicke lived surrounded by a cloud of his own making, a cloud that kept him from seeing the world in a realistic way, so that instead he saw things through the shroud of his personal delusions.
Sean Penn, in a virtuoso performance, makes us sympathize with Bicke's character. Bicke fails at his marriage and yet he has no idea why. It seems that his wife Marie (Naomi Watts) has cut him off from her and from his children (and even the dog) because she wants to move on to somebody better; yet we know he is unstable and unable to understand how he has fails her. And so she really does need to be rid of him. He also fails as a salesman, and then he fails as an entrepreneur. He is lost and desperate. And all the while there is Richard Milhous Nixon on the tube lying to the American people, the same Richard Nixon that Bicke's boss holds up as a shining example of a great salesman, the kind of man that Bicke could never be.
It is remarkable that Sean Penn was able to so convincingly portray such a character since he himself is nothing like the poor pathetic Bicke. Penn has a winning personality, is charismatic and attractive. Very few women would give up on him as Marie gives up on Bicke. I mention this because if you know people you know that people like Penn and arguably Mel Gibson who played a somewhat similar role in Conspiracy Theory (1997), could never be one of the Bickes of the world since the world loves them too much. It is only life's losers that become the crazies who do the things that Bicke does. They feel so much like failures and have such low self-esteem that they are desperate to do anything to gain some kind of emotional equilibrium. Penn worked hard on the role, and I thought he gave the kind of performance that would be the highlight of any actor's career. But again, it was just so hard to not notice that this guy in the move named Bicke was in fact Sean Penn.
The theme of the salesman as a tragic figure is an America staple. I am thinking of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross in which we see men who make a living by doing something they themselves respect only as an exploitive competition. Here we have Jack Thompson (in a nice supporting role) as Jack Jones, furniture salesman, handing motivational books by Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale to Bicke in an effort to get Bicke up to speed on how to sell by selling himself. I once knew a salesman who told me that the thing to remember is "you are always selling love. If you can do that, you will be a success."
I think director Niels Mueller did a good job of putting this story together. It is an offbeat vehicle for Sean Penn, but the movie goes beyond his performance to examine the shallow, cold and corrupt values of our society that prevailed during the Nixon administration and have led some years down the road to the George W. Bush administration (only two days left as it write this!). I hope that Mueller gets another chance to do something as interesting with a similarly excellent cast.
Summary of The Assassination of Richard Nixon
Based on real life events, Assassination is set in 1974 and centers on a businessman (Penn) who decides to take extreme measures to achieve his American dream.DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Director Commentary
Other:Closed Captioning- English
Sean Penn (looking rather Rupert Pupkin-like) is Samuel Bicke, whose life, circa 1974, has become unbearable. His wife (Naomi Watts) has left him, his dead-end sales job is killing him--even his best friend (Don Cheadle) has had enough. Bicke's a loser, but at least he's an honest one. Nixon, the epitome of dishonesty, becomes the locus of his rage, so Bicke devises a plan to eliminate him. Paul Schrader claims he finished writing Taxi Driver before the real-life Byck attempted to assassinate the president. Maybe so, but the similarities are hard to ignore (and "Bickle" sounds a lot like "Byck"). Niels Mueller (Tadpole) doesn't disguise the fact that his debut was inspired by the guy. If The Assassination of Richard Nixon doesn't hit Taxi Driver's (admittedly lofty) heights, it's still a discomfiting look at a man determined to leave his mark on the world, only to become a footnote. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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