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Nixon (1995)

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From Time Out Film Guide

Centred on a storm-tossed night in 1973, with President Nixon slipping into embittered reverie and recollection as he sits in the Lincoln Room at the White House listening to the tapes that may prove his undoing, Stone's film flashes back to Nixon's childhood in '20s California before meandering on to modern times and ending with his funeral. Though fragmented and using various styles and filmstocks, this is more engrossing than most of the duds in the director's ambitious but frustrating career, partly because it focuses squarely on such a tantalising protagonist. As played (not mimicked) by Hopkins, Tricky Dick is a maelstrom of emotions: convinced he's universally misunderstood and hated; haunted by guilt over the dead Kennedys and his own TB-afflicted brothers; alternating between idealism and despair, honesty and lies; scared, stubborn, erratic. It's a rich conception, well supported by muscular performances from Boothe (Al Haig), Sorvino (Kissinger), Hoskins (Hoover) and, especially, Allen (Nixon's wife Pat). With Watergate dominating the third and final hour, however, the narrative becomes more familiar, predictable and prone to bathos and bombast: as wayward and self-regarding as its subject, the film long overstays its welcome.

Author: GA

Time Out Film Guide

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Budd Greco said...

Posted on Aug 04 2009 11:38 In my opinion the greatest performance of Hopkins carear and a film to rival Laurence Of Arabia..Apparently Hopkins spent a year studying Nixon and working on his accent, then changed his mind and decided to concentrate on what made the man tick on the inside rather than becoming over-focused on the external behaviour patterns. His performance I cannot praise too highly..To such an extent that by the end of the movie I had completely forgotton that I had not been watching a documentary with the real Nixon..The movie has everything, good supporting actors..and a script that focuses on the main points long enough for the viewer to grasp their significance but not to become bored by them..It gives a fabulous insight to the man who was perhaps the last truly PRFESSIONAL POLITICIAN..and saw the end of an era..Nixon will always be remembered for Watergate..a third rate burglary caused by second rate paranoia..but the Nixon years changed American politics..FOR BETTER OR WORSE I AIN`T SO CERTAIN..When the American president has to apologise to a whie cop who has arrested a black man for breakin in to hs own home..Then I know Racism is alive and flourishing. aN EXCELLENT MOVIE BY AN EXCELLENT DIRECTOR..Like Nixon a dying breed

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