PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 1/4/05)

The only successful assassination attempt on our 37th President was one of character, which makes it ironically appropriate that such a radically titled film would focus more on a fictionalized character study than the actual events that inspired it.  Cowritten and directed by first-time helmer Niels Muller, The Assassination of Richard Nixon sets the way-back machine for 1974, when an average shlub named Sam Byck tried to hijack a 747 and fly it into the White House, his sights set on the Watergate-keeper himself.  Not only did Byck fail, he never even left the ground, and this historical footnote was forever swept under the rug of bigger news and scandals (that is, until Byck became a supporting character in the 1991 Stephen Sondheim musical, Assassins).

Some will challenge the idea of making a movie about this pathetic jerk-off, as if that very act glamorizes or necessitates empathy, but this Sam Bicke (as he has been re-spelled here) is compelling in his loathsomeness.  In an even meatier role than his Oscar-winning swim down Mystic River, Sean Penn stoutly carries the film by slumping into Bicke’s moustache and warped idealism with powerfully uncomfortable abandon, one-upping himself with each cringe-worthy misstep in Bicke’s life.  Estranged from the mother of his children, Marie (Naomi Watts), Bicke stalks her at home and the restaurant she waitresses at, never picking up from her exhausted aloofness that their separation is meant to be permanent.  As a mildly successful office supplies salesman, his misguided sense of respect burns a hole in his gut with inevitable results when his piss-and-vinegar boss (Jack Thompson) chides him—as management is prone to do. Even Bonny (Don Cheadle, spot-on as always), Bicke’s friend and partner to his fledgling start-up business—a portable tire-store-on-a-bus—treats him with kid gloves, both out of genuine concern and perhaps fear from his volatility.  And this is the Taxi Driver-esque descent we’re treated to, which could be dismissed as madness were it not societal alienation caused by his own agonizing folly, as if the Ricky Gervais character on BBC’s The Office were played for tragedy instead of comedy.

Yet Assassination is darkly funny, especially in a scene where Bicke tries to convince the Black Panther Party to change their image to Zebras so white folks can join.  It’s an unexpected and telling laugh, one that adds to the political context that Muller so deftly hangs his script on.  Why else would he retell this loser’s story, when Bicke’s late-movie extremism is such an easy target and dead-end statement for post-9/11 discussions? "Salesman" Nixon (the personification of all Bicke’s displaced anger) mirrors a certain Republican incumbent—but lefty leanings aside—the brilliant subtleties of this absorbing, must-see drama are best seen through Penn, who transforms a strongly nuanced script into the greatest performance of the year.

—Aaron Hillis