The Assassination of Richard Nixon

In 1974, a man named Sam Bicke hatched a plot to hijack an airplane and crash it into the White House, and actually got as far as killing the pilot of a plane on the tarmac in Baltimore before he was fatally shot by police. Director/co-writer Niels Mueller's The Assassination of Richard Nixon is not the true story of Sam Bicke, but rather a "fictionalized dramatization" carrying a message about how contemporary life drives people crazy. Unfortunately, Mueller forgot Samuel Goldwyn's classic directive that the best way to send messages was via Western Union, not the movies. Granted, Sean Penn is intent and tenacious as Bicke, a worm of a man who's a failure at everything, from everyday social interactions to his marriage, from his sales job to his pathetic bid to start his own business. But Mueller's exploration of Bicke's motives is so anemic that the film--which one can't help but compare (unfavorably) to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver--feels like a bizarre apologia for a man who refused to take any responsibility for himself or his own actions. Optional. (M. Johanson)