The Assassination of Richard Nixon

Plot synopsis:
Samuel Bicke (the name was changed in the film to avoid offending living relatives) is portrayed as an individual who wants the world to function according to honor and merit, yet he's often paranoid and dishonest, and he gets flustered and angry when things do not go according to his plans. He clearly wants to reconcile with his estranged wife Marie but cannot accept that she has moved on without him. He states that he stopped working for his brother because he perceives that his brother forced him to lie in his job, yet he lies about his marital status to get employment. He attempts to join the Black Panthers, as he believes that discrimination affects poor white people just as much as it does blacks, but his explanations for that fact do not impress the local Panther leadership.
While out drinking with his new employer at an office furniture sales office, the employer describes Richard Nixon as the greatest salesman in history, because his election promise in 1968 was to exit the Vietnam War, yet he massively increased troop numbers and won an easy re-election in 1972 on a promise of ending the same war. His employer gives him patronizing advice, while his awkwardness makes him an abysmal salesman.
Throughout the film he becomes increasingly disillusioned with friends, family, his status in society, the lot of those who are employed and his job in particular. He decides to set up a mobile tire sales business so that he will no longer be employed by others, and applies for a government loan to set up the business.
Bicke then suffers several setbacks in short succession. His sales figures continue to deteriorate, and a failed flirtation with a female customer reveals his happy marriage claims to be false. He then desperately tries to get Marie to join him for a company event, but she refuses and later sends him a divorce decree in the mail, and when he reaches her by telephone she tells him to get a life and hangs up on him, leaving him to weep in despair. Shortly afterwards, he deliberately tanks a sale and quits, and begins ranting when he sees President Nixon giving a speech on TV, repeatedly screaming "It's about MONEY, DICK!!!". He decides that as he is certain to receive his loan he can order his tires now and start the business, and breaks into his brother's tire sales business to make a large order, to be delivered to his best friend and prospective business partner, Bonny.
However, the loan is rejected and Bicke comes home one night to find a notice on his door that his rent is past due, and his brother, Julius, waiting in his flat. Julius reveals that the vendor became suspicious and contacted police, and Bonny was arrested for receiving stolen goods, which Bicke pathetically tries to say is due to racism against the African-American Bonny. Julius has bailed Bonny out and smoothed things over with the police, but says he is done entirely with his brother and leaves. With nothing and no one left in his life that he cares about, Bicke begins obsessing about Nixon. One night, after he watches a news story about a helicopter pilot who did a fly-by around the White House and got arrested, he begins putting together a plan to hijack a passenger airliner himself and crash it into the White House.
Bicke closes his bank account, steals a gun from Bonny which he conceals on his leg, and heads to a restaurant where his old boss and colleague are dining. He sarcastically thanks the boss for proving a bad man can be a good salesperson, and aims the gun at him under the table, but cannot bring himself to pull the trigger and flees. He goes to his and Marie's old house; he sleeps in the deserted, mostly barren home before he shoots and kills the family dog. The next morning, he goes to the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He buys a ticket and waits in line to board his flight. Seeing the security procedures, he has a last minute change of plan and rushes on board the airplane, shooting indiscriminately as he goes.
Once on board he seems to have little idea of what he is doing. He shoots one pilot in the head and the other in the shoulder, and finds a passenger to act as co-pilot. However, he is shot through the window in the plane's door. While the authorities close in on the plane, he commits suicide. The day's events are shown on TV, but as the film ends, his ex-wife and former best friend have no reaction to the mention of Bicke's name. Bicke then runs around his apartment with a toy plane and heads straight into the camera as the screen cuts to black. The film ends with a title card that says even if Bicke had succeeded at hijacking the plane, his plan would have failed because Nixon was not in the White House that day.

Tags: revenge, neo noir, murder, violence, flashback

Review:
Penn deserves another award, Noami Watts and Don Cheadle are also excellent, and Michael Wincott, as Penn's brother, makes his one scene memorable.Niels and Kevin Kennedy have done a truly masterful job with the script, bringing unique voices and characters to life such as I rarely see on screen.
I believe it gets released soon in New York and LA, but as Penn's Sam Bicke character might say "The system is unfair and everyone has a right to see this movie" so email ThinkFilm and tell them you want it in your city, too.
The intelligent writing, well-timed and rich score, and supportive performances by Naomi Watts, Jack Thompson and Don Cheadle blend perfectly in this marvelously crafted feature transporting the viewer into the lives and era of the exquisitely human characters who are so elegantly portrayed.
These two actors play character Sam Byck's (Sean Penn) boss and brother, respectively, and they are the authority figures in Sam's life whose influences are palpable in the film even when they are not on-screen.
It was produced independently, with the documenting the assassin, Sam Byck (Sean Penn.) It focuses on the year before he attempted (true story) to kill President Nixon in February, 1974 by flying a plane into the White House.
Other actors in the film are good at this, too, including Naomi Watts, who plays Bicke's estranged wife; Jack Thompson, who plays his hucksterish boss; and Don Cheadle, who plays his increasingly reluctant only friend.
I don't want to give anything away but I have to say -- I read the review of someone else on here who called it "taxidriver revisited" and, with all respect, that's about the silliest thing I've read on the IMDb. Anyone who watches this film and starts thinking about and comparing it to another movie instead of 9-11 and the world we are living in right now needs to stop buying DVD's and start watching the news.
If it sounds a simple story then that's because it is, but it is compelling, depressing, recognisable and very relevant to a world where large numbers of people feel cut off from the ruling classes and entirely left out of the dream that we are told to aim for by adverts, the media and our upbringing.The writing is great but the acting still needs to be good to make it work; luckily it is impressive in almost all areas.
With this heavy support cast, it speaks volumes that Penn still dominates the film and his performance is worthy of awards when the season comes but I suspect that the subject matter and the timing of the film will not make that too easy.Overall this is a strong film with a good narrative but it works best as a character study.
I'd heard nothing of it but I like Sean Penn and Naomi Watts (they were in the brilliant 21 Grams together) and everything else at the cinema I had either seen or looked crap (Man of the House, Miss Congenatailiality 2) so I chose this, hoping it to be a dark horse.
It was well made and acted but it's really, really heavy and I would not recommend it to anyone bored with their jobs or lives in general.Sean Penn plays the true story of Sam Bicke, a furniture salesman who is estranged from his family, his wife, his children, his colleagues...basically everything.
His wife doesn't care about him anymore, they're separated, his home isn't his home anymore, and he's starting on a new job for which he really isn't suited, for a boss who is a complete jerk.If I were the crying type, I would have been bawling all the way through this film, because Sean made me feel so sorry for his character, Sam Bicke.That this film is based on a real person and is a true story makes it all the more poignant and sad.Sam Bicke is "the little man".
About the disgruntle employees, the rotten system(not specific to America, just that Hollywood is reluctant to talk about it)social pressure, but most of all about failing.Failure is a topic American society does not want to cope with."Only the best survive","The only number that counts is number one"-these are the slogans embraced by society and the decadent Hollywood community, too far from reality to have a coherent point of view, that put an unbarring pressure on the "little" man who is about to snap.And snap he will...No surprise that Sean Penn was attached to the project for 6 years, as they were trying to raise the money to produce it, as he is one of the very few Hollywood actors that remain true to common sense and who didn't surrender to glitter and gleam..
But it's an excellent film on it's own and, to be fair, there are many similarities between the lead stars of both movies in terms of their acting style and approach to their roles (no wonder they seem to share a bit of a friendship in real life.) The story centres around Sam Bicke (Sean Penn).
Worn down and exasperated by the unfairness and despair he seems all around him, he begins writing what is practically a suicide note to the composer Bernstein, explaining to the only man he feels will understand him why he has been driven to mount an assassination attempt against Nixon that he begins towards the end of the movie by high-jacking a plane.I've just learned that the movie apparently took six years to make before they could get a budget to make it and the movie certainly does project a very cheap feel and look to it, but the less mainstream films like this are, the better.In the lead role, Penn projects his usual ol' misery guts persona (he's never the life and soul of the party in his films, is he?) but he still delivers an impressively raw, nervous, quietly angry, occasionally devastating portrayal of a man unable to live by the system anymore.
In "The Assassination of Richard Nixon", Sean Penn plays Sam Bicke, a disgruntled salesman who is going through a divorce and losing his job.
An absolutely gripping, exhilarating fact based tale of a man so disillusioned with the "American Dream" that he plots to "make a difference" and attempts to assassinate President Richard Nixon.Sean Penn is outstanding as Samuel J Bicke, a failing office furniture salesman with marriage problems who blames all his troubles on the government's contempt for the ordinary man on the street.This drives him to desperate measures as he plots to kill the figurehead of his country believing this will solve the problems of 1970's America, forcing a change of thinking at the top.This story never lets go for one moment, Penn is superb as a desperate man well and truly on the edge of sanity, while support from Don Cheadle as his would be business partner, Jack Thompson as his sleazy sales boss and Naomi Watts as his estranged wife, is well above average.Truly captivating.
Madness will never be that easily solved.This film should be a primer for profiling the assassin character, who is always a loser who tries to gain some stolen notice in life by trying to kill a powerful person and thereby steal some of that person's power in order to be the "somebody" he could not be by any more socially acceptable way.Only rarely these days in films does one witness the spot-on portrayal of a character, and Penn does it better than even Pacino or Hoffman as evidenced by his unparalleled recent performances in 21 Grams, Mystic River, and now Nixon.
Sean Penn plays Sam Bicke who decides to kill President Nixon in "The Assassination of Richard Nixon," a 2004 film brilliantly directed by Niels Muller, who co-wrote the excellent script with Kevin Kennedy.
The film is actually based on a true story and stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Don Cheadle.
I saw the last 20 minutes of this film and was deeply moved and when I watched the whole movie I was even more deeply moved.Sean Penn is beyond excellent in the film and the directing/cinematography/acting/music are all superb.What do you do with what remains of your life when one part after another begins to unravel and every time you attempt to tie a knot to prevent any further unraveling you find that you have only unraveled more of the few remaining threads you had left to make that new knot ?If you have never felt defeated by life and if you have never been unemployed and helpless and hopeless with more time on your hands than anyone could know what to do with - this movie may not appeal to you - but if you have been to the depths and driven by thoughts that you don't fully control - this movie captures that drowning darkness.
After losing his wife Marie (played by Watts in her almost decent role but a better comparison to Gore Verbinski's The Ring) Sam starts to lose his mind and so desperately tries to maintain his sanity and his kids.Penn goes from stoned to retarded to just plan crazy in Mueller's ingenious thought provoking movie.
The added fact that this story, so creatively written for the screen by Director Niels Mueller and screenwriter Kevin Kennedy, is based on true story makes it all the more harrowing.Few of us knew about the tale of Sam Byck who on February 27, 1974 attempted to hijack a passenger plane out of Baltimore in order to destroy President Nixon, the figurehead of all Byck's failure and frustration with life in an America gone sour for the Little Man. Even in his vengeful attempt to gain justice for his life gone awry and become a 'somebody' the world would notice he failed and committed suicide aboard his unsuccessfully hijacked plane.Mueller and Kennedy have, by admission in the credits, altered the names and locations and events of the real story in order to emphasize the anatomy of a mind in the process of disintegration.
The remainder of the film is a hushed denouement that unveils Sam's preparations, rehearsals, and ultimate failed scheme.Sean Penn is extraordinary as Sam Bicke, creating a downtrodden man whose grip on life is far too tenuous to even approach success in any endeavor and yet shows us the idealism and naiveté of this Everyman that makes us yearn for some degree of reward for him.
The entire cast is excellent: Jack Thompson is oily and hateful as he wears a Cheshire Cat grin, Naomi Watts as usual makes an unforgettable, credible character with very little screen time, and Don Cheadle and Michael Wincott provide some of the more soft and memorable lines to offset Penn's thought processes.
this is a real good movie i don't think that there is a flaw anywhere in the whole film.sean penn who is one of the best actors of today plays a man who's sanity is hanging by a thread.his boss treats him like dirt and his wife has left him and picked up with a rich man who drives a fancy car.his only desire is to be treated with respect and get a loan to start his own tire business with his friend but everything falls by the wayside for him and he starts to look around for something to pin the blame on.his level headed friend tells him that a lot of people are rude and ignorant but thats the nature of life and he must overcome it and move on but he simply cant get over the fact that people are the way they are and so the anger starts to brew up and by the end of the movie we can almost imagine penn exploding with rage.
but the point that struck me most was that bick is a good guy who is driven to do a horrible act by his fragile state of mind and that you don't have to be evil or callous to behave in a bad way,and at the end of the film i felt so sad that nobody intervened and got this fella treatment and saved the bloodshed because i was as much sad for him as his victims,as someone once said to understand is to forgive,and this film allows us to see a gentle man turn into a monster.all in all it was very good with very good performances so i look forward to seeing penn in his new film with nicole kidman if his acting in this film is anything to go by it will be just as good..
Audiences were blown away by Sean Penn's portrayal of Jimmy in "Mystic River" last year, but his acting in "Mystic River" does not even compare to his sheer tour de force performance in "The Assassination of Richard Nixon." Similar to "Taxi Driver" and "Falling Down," "Assassination" is a character study of an ordinary man reaching his breaking point, but "Assassination" is much more compelling.
"My name is Sam Bicke, and I consider myself a grain of sand." So says the protagonist (Sean Penn) of "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" into a tape recorder in a 1970's also peopled by Travis Bickle, another assassin with no normal connection to the world.
Penn's performance is so good here the audience will find Sam unlikable at every level."Assassination" premiered as part of the Un Certain Regard program at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, probably one of the only recognitions given that its hero lacks the qualities Aristotle prescribed for the tragic hero: greatness and the ability to instill pity in the audience.Yes, Richard Nixon is not assassinated, just one more failure for Sam Bicke..
I have seen this movie and it is very good, very symbolic (like Byck passing the child in the airport - perhaps leaving his innocence behind) - but that is not why I am posting here.It is the subject of the story "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" with Sean Penn, in which Byck tries to hijack DC-9 Delta flight 523 and crash it into the White House - also murders several people aboard before committing suicide onboard.Anyway, I notice Delta has a flight 523 currently active - is this the same plane???
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.
Sean Penn's scarifying, coiled-spring performance is the predominant force in first-time filmmaker Niels Mueller's fictionalized story of would-be assassin Samuel Byck, who became obsessed with killing then-President Nixon in 1974.
The movie manages to stand on its own as a picture without purposely drawing parallels to these other films, and the fact that Penn's character is named Bicke isn't a reference to Taxi Driver - after all, this is based on a true story.
the most touching movie in a really long time.It 's about of a lonely and sentient man , who doesn't have anything to live and all things go wrong in his life.it's a true fact no Hollywood trash.The Greatest performance of SEAN PENN ít's A 10 points , he is one of the best actors than i've seen in my all life.if you want to see a movie that have real lifethings like problems of personality and racism this it's the movie .
Truly one of the greatest actors in the history of American cinema, Sean Penn delivers yet another characteristically phenomenal performance in Niels Muller's The Assassination of Richard Nixon.
This outstanding movie, probably underrated, is surely a well crafted drama and stars great actors; Sean Penn, perfect as always, in addition to Don Cheadle and Naomi Watts, who didn't cut a poor figure..
We do the best we can and go on whereas the personal implosion or meltdown that many of us fear might just happen in dealing with the "system" occurs for Sam Bicke in this film.The Assassination of Richard Nixon, like Fahrenheit 911 came out during the election year of 2004 and too, is political in topic, although much more implicitly so.
I think that this film doesn't get it's just due because it is too "low key" for American mainstream audiences, but hey, they buy the tickets!This movie begins and ends with Sean Penn's performance as Sam Bicke, watching his subdued portrayal of a man unraveling, is something to behold.
Jack Thompson, as Sam Bicke's boss was also very good in his small role, the "honorable mention" in this film has to go to Michael Wincott as Sam's brother Julius, a GREAT turn in the single scene he has, something to be said for the small parts in the hands of a craftsman who can make you appreciate and remember his one lonely scene in a movie dominated by an towering acting performance.Enjoy!
Birke is driven to the edge because of the world that has seemingly gone insane on him, and he decides to do something about it.The Assassination of Richard Nixon is a film that is driven by the ex caliber performance by Sean Penn, who brings the story of a down on his luck ordinary man onto the screen with such intensity and realism that the audience is never doubting the situations that occur throughout the film.
The Assassination of Richard Nixon is about a man named Sam Bicke (Sean Penn) who attempts to construct his life around his perceived morals and values, and ultimately fails miserably.
Niels Mueller takes a twisted, but striking view of reality and throws it into the viewers face in The Assassination of Richard Nixon.This film, "inspired by a true story," gives us Sam Bicke, a struggling salesman, disenchanted by the world around him.
By the time the film gets to the point where Penn's character gets the idea to fly a plane into the White House, the movie is almost over -- but I felt like I knew this man, and why he would do such a thing, and it seemed very logical given what he has gone through up to that point.