Nixon

Rating:
Summary: Nixon, I still wounder?
Review: As... a film, Nixon was a bit confusing. Obiously I did not live during the era,and it was a bit confusing for me to grasp the producers point of view. I did gain the sence of simpathy over the president. It gave the Real Nixon a personal and humane sence. "An ordrinary guy who all he wanted was to be accepted no matter the price."

...

Rating:
Summary: A Great movie!
Review: While others have questioned the historical accuracy of Oliver Stone in this film, it is really the super acting job done by film greats such as Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen that allow me to give this film five stars. The Collectors Edition has some nice extras but I would have expected more.
The film is more relevant to someone like me who lived through the Nixon years and saw how his actions divided America. I think this film really portrays that period in our history when we were divided. Nixon could have done a lot to heal the wounds but did not.

Get this film, especially if you lived through those times.

Rating:
Summary: Stone Does It Again
Review: Nixon is a must-see for all politicos.

Paul Sorvello gives a dead-on impersonation of Henry Kissinger, Anthony Hopkins gives an Oscar winning performance (ok he didn't get a oscar, but we all know hollywood is filled with leftist liberals right?)

This movie is the answer to the hatchet job given to President Nixon by historians. Nixon has finally been vindicated; long live the President!

Rating:
Summary: Available finally!
Review: Indeed, "Nixon" could very well have been directed by Orson Welles. Presented in the sprawling epic style, we discover that Nixon isn't the Akyroydian caricature we find on SNL, but a man whose many facets are progressively revealed to us through secondary characters. We jump temporally backwards and forwards and get glimpses - through Pat Nixon (Joan Allen), his advisors, his mother (revealed mostly in flashback), shadowy right-wingers and flower-children, and perhaps most damning, the famous tapes. We have a director that's obviously not fond of Nixon (much like Welles and Hearst), yet still encourages the viewer to at least understand the man, and brings in helpings of Shakespearian tragedy into the mix (like JFK). Stone then brings in his polished cinematography and editing, and the three hours just fly.

A couple complaints about the DVD. The film presentation itself was the director's cut, rendering the Deleted/Extended Scenes useless (aside from Stone's introductions.) Also, the difference of film quality between the final cut and the extra scenes spliced in is pretty significant - some of the scenes (particularly the Richard Helms scene) appeared almost like video quality. The transfer wasn't too great overall, but since Stone shoots on all sorts of stock, some of this might be intentional. The JFK Director's Cut, although older, did a much better job at maintaining a high level of quality throughout.

The Charlie Rose interview was very informative, but of course much too short (1 hr.) Both Rose and Stone seem to have had a lot to say. Stone also contributes two commentary tracks, but the amount of silence in them (again, relative to JFK) doesn't make it that rewarding.

Rating:
Summary: Over the Top
Review: I don't quite know what the make of Nixon. Was it satire, farce or did Stone intend it to be a serious biopic? It's totally over the top. Oliver Stone's Nixon is part anti-Christ and part obvious nutcase. Anthony Hopkins seemed to be channeling Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shinning.

I seriously doubt that the real people depicted in this movie actually spoke in long monolouges. I also don't believe that some of the scenes depicted ever took place.

This movie had so much potential but Stone blew it by going overboard. It's not exactly "Mommy Dearest" but it does verge on being campy.

Rating:
Summary: It Could Have Been So Much Better...
Review: First of all, I will say that I am a fan of Richard Nixon's. As a matter of fact, I believe that he was one of the greatest Presidents this country ever produced. Having said that I had hoped that this movie would be of some interest to me. I had also hoped that Oliver Stone would stay away from the "brooding, hunched-over, dark character" occupying the White House. After all that very incorrect portrait has been put forth by Richard Nixon's enemies and detractors for better than fifty years.
Those who worked with President Nixon all say that was not the case and attempts to portray him as such are but one more attempt to prove the old adage: repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth.

Unfortunately, Oliver Stone buys into the lie. We see the brilliant Anthony Hopkins as Nixon acting paranoid and brooding as he goes through his life. He even suggests that Nixon had some sort of "survivor" guilt because he lost two brothers. All this while Nixon is supposedly drinking heavily and popping pills. What fascinates me is not that Stone would make such a movie, (that's obvious) but why he had to rely on all the old stereotypes to make a movie. It proved that he didn't do much more historical research than Saturday Night Live would do for a skit. Oliver Stone proved in living technicolor that what President Nixon stood for scares him and those of his political bent. It proves that when you don't have much in the way of facts, you can always fall back on that old chestnut, "artistic license". This is borne out by the fact that Stone gives all of five (literally) minutes to Nixon's trips to China and Russia, and about one minute to his ending the Vietnam war. The rest is a conglomeration of film snippets that look like a five year old child took a pair of scissors to the film. Nothing flows or is smooth.

The sad thing is that this could have been such a fine movie if there was anything nearing adherence to the facts. Richard Nixon is fascinating and this could have been shown in a balanced and fair way. Instead Oliver Stone took a hackneyed cliche, added some of his own historical revisionism and voila, the great director said "I have a movie!"

This movie could have been great-it could have been a contender, but it ended up a victim of its creator's fears, prejudices, and hatreds.

Rating:
Summary: great film-making, good history
Review: While Oliver Stone has many times given into historic speculation and wild theorizing, his unflinching love for controversy has always had my respect. With "Nixon", however, Stone largely sticks to the certifiable historical record, perhaps in response to the Kafka-esque damnation of "JFK." Nixon comes through in this film as I'm sure he was in actuality: a manipulative, conniving political genius, albeit a seriously disturbed one. Nixon as a pill-popping alcoholic? Such a stretch you say? Read the recollections of Haldeman and Erlichman, not to menton Kissinger, who constantly make reference to Nixon's chemical dependancy and mental instability. Actcally as history, "Nixon" works quite well. Sure there are embelishments for the sake of time: the "Jack Jones" character, for instance. But we would be foolhardy, not to mention dead wrong, to ignore the role of big money in the election of Nixon in '68 and '72. The supposedly "wild" ssumptions Stone makes about Nixon and his paranoia about the JFK killing? Once again, read Haldeman's own account, in which he speculates that Nixon's constant references to the "Bay of Pigs" was a "code" for JFK. (The Bay of Pigs operation was inherited by Kennedy from the Eisenhower White House, and who had been its handler then? Nixon.) I don't want to turn this into a rant, but I sincerely challenge Nixon defenders to actually go back and READ the history, which has become even more starkly clear since Nixon's death and the release of de-classified Watergate tapes. Like Welles and Kubrick, Stone is a man ahead of his time, and doomed to suffer condemnation by phillistines on both sides of the aisle. But his films only gain relevance, and furthemore, truth, as years pass.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: To me, there is nothing more hilarious than a drama that is so lousy, so pretentious, so historically ignorant it becomes a must see. "Nixon" is just such a film. Oliver Stone must have been on a six week glue-sniffing binge before he slapped this travesty together (or maybe he wasn't -- which is even scarier!). The lengendary wacko Stone gets the big stuff wrong (like the character "Jack Jones" who didn't even exist) and he gets the small stuff wrong (Bob Haldeman is portrayed as a heavy drinker when in fact he was a Christian Scientist -- they don't drink). Speaking of drinking, Nixon is depicted as a pill popping drunk too (he wasn't). Of course, you would have to pop many pills and have many drinks to buy Anthony Hopkins as Richard Nixon anyway. The first time I saw "Nixon", I hated it because I watched it as a drama. Don't make that mistake. Watch it as a comedy and it's the gift that keeps on giving! First of all, you'd think it could be played only one of two ways: Nixon as good (fat chance coming from the left wing Stone) or Nixon as evil (more likely coming out Kennedy-loving Hollywood). But no -- Stone throws us a curve: His Nixon is TOTAL BUFFOON!! And even Nixon's legends of enemies admit he wasn't an idiot. The Nixon here couldn't be elected dog catcher, wouldn't be married to the quite attractive Joan Allen, and shouldn't have been within ten miles of the nuclear button. Some highlights: Anthony Hopkins as Nixon is simply the the most catastrophic miscast since John Wayne played Ghengis Khan! This is not to say he's not thoroughly enjoyable (in a Plan 9 From Outer Space kinda way). Paul Sorvino as Kissinger is a real knee slapper also. Almost worth the price of admission right there (and, yes, kids, the obligatory Nixon-Kissinger prayer as-the-buzzards-are-circling The White House scene is included in all its gory). Bob Hoskins as the Raging Queen (J. Edgar Hoover) is handled in typical Oliver Stone subtlety (that of a sledge hammer). In fact, the only character who is portrayed in even a decent light is John Ehrlichman (probably because he consulted on the film). When it first came out, I remember Stone said it wasn't "the" Nixon, but "a" Nixon - which means he took the project with all the seriousness that you the viewer should take it...which is not much. This is not to say "Nixon" is not superior entertainment. It is. In spades. Just remember to watch it as you would, say, a Marx Brothers film (without the deep plot). "Nixon" is the political equivalent of "Mommie Dearest" (and we all remember how funny THAT was!). Now if we could only get Anthony Hopkins, as Nixon, screaming "NO MORE WIRE HANGERS" as he plots endlessly with Paul Sorvino, as Kissinger, on how to best screw the Kennedys, destroy the treasonous Daniel Ellsberg, depict George McGovern as an out-to-lunch socialist (which indeed he was), accuse the news media of being elitist scum (which they are) -- and all the while be beating his kids -- we may really be on to something!

Rating:
Summary: Good Film, Bad History
Review: Essentially a hate letter masquerading as a mass-market film, Oliver Stone's supposed historical-drama of the life of Richard Nixon fails on both counts. The understated vengeance with which Stone attacks Nixon, both personally and professionally, is only outdone by Stone's utter neglect in this film's depiction of those whose confidence in Nixon during a period wherein mainstream America's distaste for 60's-era social meltdown, crime, drug use, and foreign-fomented anti-Vietnam rabble-rousing, for better or worse, largely led to Nixon's election to two consecutive terms as President.

This film is particularly problematic in that it makes a special point of not only reducing Nixon to the level of a psychotic stooge, but also of attempting to destroy the reputations of literally every significant figure associated with Nixon throughout his entire life, save, perhaps, Henry Kissinger; Kissinger is only sideswiped, presumably because Stone found it politically-incorrect to direct hate speech against a Jew. No one else, however, is spared Stone's wrath.

The tragic downfall in an otherwise successful political career, namely Nixon's almost certain criminal culpability in the Watergate Scandal, is dealt with ala the Woodward-Bernstein dumbed-down white-wash without further visible research or exposition. The fact that Stone supposedly scoured the ends of the earth to get to the 'truth' for "JFK", but simply rubber-stamped the Washington Post's take on John Dean's self-exculpatory version of Watergate for "Nixon", speaks volumes.

Again, a brain-dead Watergate view-bias is superficially regurgitated and treated as 'accepted fact', mainly in deference to Stone's larger attempts to roast Nixon over Vietnam, a conflict which democrat Lyndon Johnson fully embraced and escalated, and then abandoned by quitting the 1968 race, and which Nixon subsequently inherited and ended, anything to the contrary that Stone subtlety asserts in this film notwithstanding.

Stone devotes miles of film to Nixon's ostensibly-horrific prosecution of that miserable war, yet opportunist-communist Pol Pot's murder of millions of Cambodians in the vacuous aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal, same withdrawal which was the goal of the anti-war "peace" movement, receives only a few scant words in the epilogue. Shame. This film's body refuses to considerately acknowledge Nixon's objective of preventing the domino-effect potential for genocide which was, in fact, played out to the letter after the war, one would hope to the chagrin of the anti-war neophytes.

Stone attempts to make up for the lack of historical integrity in this film by putting endless incredible, undocumented words into Nixon's mouth through use of dramatic license. It would not matter if it were not so obvious that Stone's intention was to tar and feather Nixon, and attempt to re-write history in the process.

Even an immensely strong cast in choice, direction, and performance nevertheless don't make this dog bark. In fact, Anthony Hopkins' valiant, finely-directed effort in the title role evokes less empathy for Nixon than did Alec Guinness' portrayal of Hitler in "The Last Ten Days". That should tell someone something.

Most true students of Nixon agree that while the President was certainly neurotic and plagued with other personality problems, he was, at the core, the pivotal political figure of the second half of the 20th Century. The filmmakers attempted to skew and/or rewrite that fact from their own perspective. In this outing, at least, they have utterly failed.

Stone's on-the-sleeve politics aside, this is a totally professionally executed film that will almost certainly engage the ill-informed, at least from a stylistic standpoint. It is quite close to perfection in its cinematic execution. Perhaps that was the film's primary intent, and perhaps it's also unfortunate that Stone chose this subject matter for what could be his 'Tour De Force'. The production qualities are very high, although at times the occasionally tedious outing takes on a bit of an (albeit-forgivable) low-budget appearance. Necessarily disjointed in spots, the film does succeed in covering Nixon's entire life, an epic endeavor in any event. Stone's modeled approach to the production itself is excellent. Stone deserved credit to that end. 'Nixon' is further proof of Stone as an outstanding producer.

Everyone knows that Nixon was a jerk. Stone did not need 3-plus hours to elucidate that fact. Stone's error here is that of era-context. Unfortunately for this film and Stone, all the spin in the world cannot overcome the fact that a majority of Americans did not buy into a so-called stateside 'peace' movement whilst clearly corrupt communists in the USSR and Red China were attempting to expand their sick reach into the Free World. Unfortunately for America, Nixon was the best, and perhaps only, choice which mainstream America had at its disposal during the American Nation's most trying recent times. This fact was mostly overlooked, or side-stepped outright, in the film.

Again, Stone failed to fully capture the larger social dynamic that brought Nixon to power in the first place: large numbers of practical people that had no use for people of Stone's laudable, but demonstrably naïve, world-view.

To Stone's credit, the film is mostly devoid of conspiracy-type theories, even though evidence to such ends may exist with respect to Nixon and American History. But Stone does try.

The film's fatal downfall is its failure to present a fully-rounded image of Nixon himself, a man whom most scholars concede to be of an exceptionally complex, if flawed, composition. Instead, "Nixon" only succeeds for those whose opinions of Nixon are already cast in stone, no pun intended.

Considering Stone's well-known predispositions, some might claim he showed at least a modicum of balance and restraint. Stone's weak explanation of equally-guilty vipers on the opposite side of the aisle, same being critical to the accurate painting of Nixon as a complete political entity, tends to suggest otherwise. You be the judge.

As movie making: an A-. As History, a D, and that's generous.

Peter Stoll

Rating:
Summary: A superb film
Review: After having read many of the illuminative posts on this film I feel compelled to keep my comments here short as many of my positive thoughts on this film have already been touched upon.

I simply want to state that "Nixon" is a superb film, an intriguing, contentious interpretation of American history which, in my humble opinion, will eventually be understood as a classic.

What can be said that has not been said except that Stone's analysis of his title character is potent, touching, and altogether surprising. Stone does not vilify Nixon, but characterizes Nixon as a fundamentally good individual who is eventually corrupted by the trappings of power and that when Nixon falls it is tragic for all the positive that has gone unfulfilled. Nixon is presented as a three dimensional character and the film challenges us to weigh the evils committed against the expanse of Nixon's life. What emerges is an intriguing problematic: judgement is problematized.

Stone has done a fascinating thing, for every potently evil Nixon moment we are given moments of pain, humility, and moral strength and an impression (the Jack Jones scene) that Nixon had the potential, as a Republican, to stand up and confront the extreme right wing elements of the American political landscape. Stone implies that some sort of radical moment was at hand in American history, a moment that Nixon undermined by his own actions.

Nixon is a complex, long, and ultimately confrontational film. Stone has made the best sort of cinematic biography, one that challenges your views regardless of what they are politically.