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Nixon (Bonus Edition) [VHS]

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When Anthony Hopkins was cast as Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone's bio of the 37th President, many were leery of the casting choice. I myself pictured Hopkins doing a combination of Nixon and Hannibal Lecter: "I'm not a crook -- and if anyone thinks so, I'll eat their liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti .... SLURP!!" However, Hopkins does do a marvelous job and disappears into the role without becoming a standup comedian's caricature. Even though Nixon does and says vile things throughout the film, the audience still has sympathy for the character -- even those like me who found the real Richard Nixon dispicable.

Stone portrays Nixon as a tragic figure who had the intelligence and the electoral mandate to elevate himself and his administration to greatness, but let it all slip away by becoming bogged down in the quagmire of Watergate. Nixon complains incessantly about how the Kennedys are everything he is not. However, it becomes clear that his hatred of the Kennedys is based as much on his loathing of himself as on any real scorn shown him by the "Eastern establishment."

Stone, as in JFK, takes certain liberties with Nixon's story and acknowledges as much in a disclaimer before the story begins. Even those who believe President Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy, for example, would find it hard to believe that Richard Nixon was involved, even tacitly, in the plot to kill JFK. Stone also takes liberties with his portrayal of Richard and Pat Nixon's marital relationship. Even though some incidents are no doubt true, it's pretty clear that some scenes between the two are conjecture on Stone's part.

However, these are minor quibbles. Nixon is a penetrating, engrossing biography that both portrays him as a ruthless, vicous, paranoic lunatic and a character who elicits sympathy from the audience. The supporting cast is amazing and includes James Woods, Mary Steenburgen, Ed Harris, David Hyde Pierce, Annabeth Gish, Kevin Dunn, J.T. Walsh, Powers Booth, Paul Sorvino, Edward Herrmann, Larry Hagman, Dan Hedeya, Tony LoBianco, Bob Hoskins, E.G. Marshall, David Paymer, Tony Goldwyn, Fuyvush Finkel and Saul Rubinek. However, the standout supporting player is Joan Allen as Pat Nixon who is a dead ringer for the former First Lady. Allen's portrayal shows the emotional pain Mrs. Nixon endured behind the seemingly placid facade she presented to the American public. Coupled with Hopkins' Nixon, it's an acting tour de force that carries the film.

After all the vile things he does during the course of the film, Nixon, the night before his resignation, is reduced to staring at a portrait of his idolized archenemy John F. Kennedy and proclaiming that "... when they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are." Even the most die-hard member of Nixon's enemies' list can't help but feel pity for Richard Nixon during this scene. It's a great achievement by Oliver Stone to make this bitter, corrupt and wretched man worthy of the audience's sympathy at the same time we disdain him.

Oliver Stone's fascinating insight into the Nixon administration is not for everyone's delight. The closest thing to a "JFK" sequal, 'Nixon' rolls all the players into a ball of naughtiness & takes it from there. Hard to keep up with if un-familiar with the facts surrounding the 'watergate-scandal', but if you know your homework it's alot of fun. Superb casting,I must say, Stone started this epic right after "Natural Born Killers" so it has all the internal flare of film-making. Immense enjoyment on DVD, this film IS very under-rated,losing 'Best Picture' oscar to Mel Gibson's "Braveheart"... you can see how not everybody wants this film around in the long-run. Thumbs up!

What infuriates all those apologists and fanatical supporters of Richard Nixon out there is that Oliver Stone supposedly has an axe to grind about their man by making a film like NIXON. They assumed a lot, but didn't even bother to see the film.

The truth is that NIXON is much more even-handed in its portrayal of the 37th President of the United States than I thought it could be. Anthony Hopkins gives a reasonably fair portrayal of Nixon, and Joan Allen is tremendous as his wife Pat. Although Stone's penchant for conspiracy does get the better of him at times, he sees Nixon as more a tragic victim than as an evil power-monger, a vision that is closer to the truth than what Nixon's enemies made him out to be in reality.

Stone wisely does not gloss over the simple facts about the man. Nixon was indisputably a great and cagey anticommunist politician who managed to split the Sino-Soviet communist alliance in two and thus promote stability in the Cold War world for years to come. But he left a lot to be desired as a human being, being paranoid, distrustful, deceitful, and, in the end, blatantly dishonest. In that sense, the saga of Richard Nixon ranks as the American equivalent of a Greek tragedy: so much explosive potential destroyed by scandal.

As in JFK, Stone has assembled a massive cast of people: Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins, J.T. Walsh, and James Woods, just to name a few. Despite its few faults, NIXON is a fair portrait of perhaps the most frustrating and complicated man ever to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Oliver Stone's "Nixon" isn't really the cinematic biography of American Commander-in-Chief and Paranoid Extraordinaire Richard M. Nixon, but more like a latter day "Richard III". Stone need only have given the ogrish Nixon (played fascinating and disturbingly by the gifted Anthony Hopkins) a hunchback and had him kill a few kids in the Tower of London to have completed the deal.

I am a big Nixon fan, if only for his strangeness, for his political eccentricity in a political system where only the bland, the smiling, the sound-biteable, the contempibly predictable is rewarded. Nixon, to me, has always seemed like an anachronistic creation of pure will, a force of random Brownian motion, a misunderstood Machiavellian demon, hopelessly paranoid, unmistakably brilliant, brutally deformed, unequivocally human, a misshapen creature.

Stone turns that on its head, and suggests that at worst Nixon may just have been naive. Driven, yes. Ambitious, yes. Duplicitous, only when it suited him. But naive. And that, truly, is the fascination with this lavish little probe into the mind and madness that was Richard Nixon, and the insanity that was the America he helmed. Oliver Stone's "Nixon" is flawed, oddly talky, features an impossibly gorgeous Joan Allen as the impossibly dowdy Pat Nixon. But with all that against it, it is compulsive. It is fascinating. It kept me up all night, for all 212 of its minutes (get the Director's cut). Can more be said?

Perhaps. Stone, who helmed "Natural Born Killers" and "Wall Street" and "JFK", is incapable of making a bad moviek, and "Nixon" is no exception. But like those other cinematic feats, Stone has a peculiar knack for glorifying his monsters: "Wall Street" became nothing so much as a Wall Street investment banking recruiting video for finance neophytes frothing at the mouth to become the next Gordon Gekko. "Natural Born Killers" made mass murder look sexy.

Same with "Nixon": far from a gnomish American Machiavelli, Nixon comes across as a sympathetic dupe, manipulated by his Quaker California youth, by his hopeless class insecurity, by the very real fear and lack of confidence made manifest in this sweating middle class creature, contrasted unseemingly with the sweatless WASP Prince John F. Kennedy.

"Nixon", then, is surprisingly sympathetic, a toxic stew of Nixon's paranoia and the insanity over which he ruled. Stone is a brilliant director, but he is capable of terrible stuff: here an editor is called for, and the team of Brian Berdan ("Mothman Prophecies") and Hank Corwin ("Natural Born Killers") cull the bad stuff while emphasizing the good. Director of Photography Robert Richardson, who loves MTV-quick cuts juxtaposed with ethereal, epic, jaw-dropping long shots (he has rolled out all of Stone's work---all of it!---"Natural Born Killers", "JFK", "Wall Street", "Platoon"---and gone on to helm both "Kill Bill" flicks as well as "Wag the Dog" and the lush Victorian "Four Feathers") does that voodoo he does so well.

Frankly, though, "Nixon" is an actor's movie. The acting is nearly uniformly superb, with the exception of Joan Allen (Pat Nixon, Nixon's dearly beloved), who was yummy to behold but totally failed the sniff test. Anthony Hopkins doesn't look a thing like Tricky Dick, but totally owns the movie and compels respect: and what a complicated role! James Woods does his thing as Haldeman, sneering and brooding the whole time. The late great J.T. Walsh brings up the rear as the crafty Erlichmann. David Hyde Pierce is nervous and spot-on as John Dean, though John Diehl is underwhelming as the legendary GG Liddy.

But again, this is an actor's Nirvana: Paul Sorvino as Kissinger (pure caricature)! Bob Hoskins as the cruel J. Edgar Hoover! Ed Harris as the murderous Howard Hunt! Uber-liberal Sam Waterston as the truly demonic (I mean truly demonic) Richard Helms (love the contacts, bro!). And best of all, the inimitable, tightly contained Powers Boothe as Alexander Haig, always in "charge here", always ready to blow. Did I mention the score is by John Williams? I didn't? It works (duh!).

"Nixon" is one of Stone's masterworks, easily rivalling "JFK" for pure consumptive paranoid entertainment. Absolute power may not corrupt absolutely, but it sure does entertain---absolutely.

This review refers to the DVD edition of "Nixon"

This film opens with a notation, that it is a dramtic interpertation of the events based on public records, that some scenes may be condensed or hypothesized. With that said, you will find this film to be an enlighting, educational and entertaining look at this turbulent time in American History. Whatever you thought or think about Nixon, whether you admired him or hated him, you'll get a good look at the man who had such a great impact on the country and the world.

Oliver Stone keeps us fascinated with the story from start to finish. It includes Nixon's life as a young boy growing up in a Quaker family and the tragic loss of two brothers, that seems to have quite an influence on his life, his football years at Whittier College,trying to rise out from under the shadow of the beloved John Kennedy, his role in the Viet Nam War, the Presidency and of course the infamous Watergate break-in scandel, leading to his resignation from the Whitehouse. It's not just the events that keep us captivated in this well made film, but Stone delves into the depths of Nixon's soul and the people around him. His relationship with his mother, his wife, and the figures that he worked most closely with, are all very much part of this enthralling story.

The cast is simply amazing as they key players in the events. They all seem to become the very characters they are portraying. Joan Allen, Powers Boothe, Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins(who does a fabulous job as J. Edgar Hoover), E.G. Marshall, J.T. Walsh and James Woods are a few of the very talented actors involved. I want to make special mention of Paul Sorvino who took on the look and persona of Henry Kissinger so well, that it took me several minutes to realize it was Sorvino!

This is a film that may well be appreciated by the History buff and the Film buff alike. It's a great way to learn about or relive this eventful era in American History.

The DVD I have is not the special edition.There is closed captioning in English for those needing it but there are no other special features. It is a good way to go for those just looking for a quality film with a quality transfer.The DVD presents a beautiful widescreen picture with excellent surround sound in DD5.1. And although Amazon is out of stock on this edition, there are some really good deals from the outside sellers. If you don't mind spending a little more and would like to hear the commentary and interviews,you may want to consider the "Special Edition"

Whichever edition you decide on, this is one film that is well worth having in your collection.
Enjoy...Laurie

also recommended:
(for Ed Harris fans):
Just Cause
and
Empire Falls

I was 7-years-old when Nixon walked up the helicopter steps, turned around and raised both hands with his trademark peace signs, and departed the White House lawn, never to return again as President.

So, while this portrayal is perhaps not the best method to learn a chapter of American history that I was too young to remember, it sure comes awfully close. Hopkins' portrayal of Nixon is so good, it's almost eerie. Joan Allen is brilliant as Pat Nixon-- the Oscar nod is well-deserved. Sorvino IS Kissinger. The character portrayals of all the characters are simply stunning.

What I do have a problem with, however, is that Oliver Stone often comes off as pompous and self-righteous with some of the over-the-top liberties he takes with "dramatic historical accounts"--events that MAY have happened. That, along with the overdramatic music swells, odd camera angles, mood lighting, and other gimmicks that Stone incorporates to blur the line between fiction and reality.

Still, those flaws aside, this is a compelling story, that draws you in, and makes you not want to stop watching. While I have few doubts that Stone tells this from a bitter, over-the-hill, flower child point of view, it also seems that Stone almost pities Nixon, as a man who could have been remembered as a great achiever. This movie pulls no punches in showing that Nixon's achievements were overshadowed by his inability to overcome his demons.

Truly an unflinching view of a powerful moment of the 20th Century.

This may indeed be Oliver Stone's masterpiece, although as one would expect from Oliver Stone, it is a flawed and disjointed masterpiece, a monumental tragedy in the cathartic mode of the ancient Greeks. There is an Orson Welles/Citizen Kane quality about the film that is fascinating, including a journalistic/newsreel-ish feel that is unmistakably derivative. But it isn't really about Richard Nixon. Rather what Oliver Stone has constructed here is a mythology about a certain political persona that resembles Nixon in a milieu that resembles American politics and some things that happened once upon a time some thirty years ago.

Anthony Hopkins is brilliant and compelling in the title role, but in no way would I mistake him for Richard Milhous Nixon. He is both too depraved and all too human in his intense portrayal of the only president to resign under the pressure of impeachment. The Richard Nixon that I recall played his cards much closer to his vest (he was a terrific poker player, according to his naval buddies who lost a lot of their mustering out money to him aboard ship) and was not nearly as sympathetic as Hopkins and Stone make him. Nixon was cold and unfeeling except when it came to something that touched on his self-interest, and then he became pathological.

One sees in this film traces of Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) in that he hints of a Cuban plot to kill John F. Kennedy while imagining that Lee Harvey Oswald was Cuban-inspired. Indeed, Stone intimates that J. Edgar Hoover was somehow involved in the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 partly because he wanted to insure Nixon's victory by eliminating the one person who could beat him, and partly because his experience with Robert Kennedy as Attorney General was not a pleasant one for Hoover.

Conspiracy was in the air in those days, and many Americans took it as gospel that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was a player in those assassinations. And of course it is always wise to ask who benefits from certain events, and there is no doubt that Nixon would have had a lot more trouble beating Robert Kennedy in 1968 than he had in beating George McGovern. And Bobby Kennedy as president would have been a nightmare for the corrupt J. Edgar Hoover and his fiefdom.

But Oliver Stone is not really interested in actual history as much as he is in his vision of the tortured Nixon himself and his fall from grace. It is strange but although Hopkins did not really look like Nixon or behave like Nixon (although he had some of the mannerisms down pat) it didn't matter because somehow he became a Nixon-like personage, a kind of ghost of Nixon, perhaps, a Nixon truer than true in some ways with his ever present worry about his image and his obsession with the Kennedy glamour that he could never have, his "Republican cloth-coat" middle-class heritage, and his gift for political infighting.

One of the best scenes occurs under the Lincoln memorial as Nixon is confronted by some Vietnam War protestors and especially one 19-year-old girl who challenges his view of his responsibility and ultimately of himself. What Stone is able to do through such scenes is to make Anthony Hopkins's Nixon more sympathetic than the real Nixon ever was. We see Hopkins as a tortured Shakespearean protagonist, King Lear or Othello or Hamlet, souls tormented with the contrast between the grandeur of their station, and the weakness of their flesh.

Another great scene is when the Texas power broker threatens Nixon by reminding him "who made him" and "who can destroy him." Nixon is unperturbed as he counter-threatens the power broker with the holy terror of the IRS, and then smiles as though it is just another day at the office.

A third great scene is late in the film as a drunken Pat Nixon confronts Nixon, who is falling apart under the pressure of the Watergate investigation, her eyes the eyes of woman looking at a worm, her manner accusatory and venomous.

In the end we come to identify with Nixon as we did with Lear and Hamlet, although of course Nixon properly seen is more like Claudius.

The cast is eclectic and you really need a program to keep track of them. Although I recall the players from the Nixon years, Haldeman, Erhlichman, Henry Kissinger, John Dean, Al Haig, Attorney General John Mitchell and his bimbo wife Martha (burlesqued in a fine cameo by Madeline Kahn), and the rest of them, I couldn't form distinct persons in my mind. The actors themselves are top notch for the most part, James Woods, J. T. Walsh, Paul Sorvino, Ed Harris, E.G. Marshall, etc., but the real world contrast between their countenances and those of the historical figures was so glaring as to be almost comical at times.

Of course there was no getting around this. Stone had to either hire unknown actors or to just live with the unreality of the actors not really resembling the people they were portraying. There were some striking exceptions, however. Joan Allen as Pat Nixon, the president's straight-laced and ever loyal (in public) wife was something close to a dead-ringer, and Allen did a brilliant job of bringing the historical first lady to life. Sorvino did not look all that much like Henry Kissinger, but his voice and manner were absolutely perfect. David Barry Gray who played Nixon as a young man did indeed look a lot like the young Nixon. Corey Carrier who played him as a boy was much like I would imagine Nixon as a boy.

Also worth noting are Mary Steenburgen who played Nixon's mother, and Bob Hoskins who played J. Edgar Hoover. Steenburgen seemed the very embodiment of the wise and hardtack Quaker mother while Hoskins's sleazy lampoon of Hoover was creepy enough to make your skin crawl.

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.

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.

I'm an old hand at hating Richard Nixon. I had a head start over Oliver Stone at Nixon-hating; I was already adept at it in 1960, when Stone was just an early teenager. Stone's cinematic biography of Nixon insistently portrays Nixon himself as a Nixon-hater, the most ardent Nixon-hater of all, a man of painful insecurity, what radio/TV psychologists would call a victim of poor self image, verging on clinical paranoia. In fact, Stone's depiction of Nixon is remarkably sympathetic and multi-faceted. This fictionalized Nixon was, as the despicable fictionalized Henry Kissinger says, a man who had greatness in his grasp but who destroyed himself. The cast of accomplices and sycophants - all fictionalized of course - around Nixon during his presidency are uniformly lesser men, simpler in their evil, than he is: Haldeman is a cold-blooded apparatchik, the least troubled by ethics of the crew; Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Dean are uncomplicated placemen; Colson, Hunt, Hoover, Haig, and especially CIA Director Richard Helms are figures of Machiavellian evil. Surrounded by such a crew of villains, poor Richard Milhouse can honestly be perceived as 'a man more sinned against than sinning.'

Did you heed the word 'fictional' in that first paragraph? This film is a work of artistic interpretation, as much so as Shakespeare's Richard the Third or John Adams's opera Nixon in China. Most of the negative criticisms of the film have essentially denied the legitimacy of an artistic interpretation of 'current' events. The film was released in 1995, only twenty three years after the Watergate burglary-fiasco. Is that enough time to justify the use of Nixon as a 'dramatis persona' in what amounts to a modern Greek tragedy? All the themes of Aeschylus and Sophocles are here, fatal chance and hubris in abundance. Judged exclusively as a work of art, a theater piece intended to challenge the minds and emotions of an audience, Stone's "Nixon" seems to me to be a magnificent success. Anthony Hopkins is powerfully believable in the title role, just as he would be in the roe of Macbeth or Dumas's Richelieu. The collage cinematography - color mixed with black-and-white, flashbacks to Nixon's childhood, news photo realia blended with Stone's own footage - is superb. Joan Allen's portrayal of Pat Nixon was Oscar-worthy, and virtually any of the supporting cast of baddies might equally have been honored. In short, it's a potent piece of theatrical drama.

But there's still a nagging question of its 'historical' accuracy, much as we'd like to assert that history and art are different matters. Just how historically accurate is it? I'd suggest taking a look at other books, or merely at the Watergate article on wikipedia, if you're perturbed by that question. You'll find that Stone has hewn rather closely to the known facts of the events. What isn't known ... where the facts are vague... there Stone has freely asserted a controversial interpretation. The film implies that CIA attempts to 'eliminate' Fidel Castro were directly responsible for the assassination of JFK, or at least that Nixon labored under some fearful sense of guilt that such a responsibility was his. Stone does NOT explicitly endorse such a 'conspiracy' theory; he subtly shows Nixon agonizing over its consequences. Only the most fervent right-wing 'patriot' could deny that the CIA had gone 'rogue' in its several decades of covert operations. Stone's Nixon is helplessly aware of his inability to manage the "beast" of State; in full conscience, he both detests the CIA/FBI and depends on their complicity, in a "can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" moral quandary.

Stone's ambiguous hero Nixon saw himself as a great president, an accomplisher, and he repeatedly lists his accomplishments: ending the draft; generously increasing Social security and SSI; diplomatic recognition of China and cautious arms reduction negotiations with the USSR; decreased military spending; some Keynesian measures of economic stabilization; effective support for desegregation, Civil Rights in general, and the ill-fated ERA; support for abortion rights, urged by his wife Pat; an impressive record of support for environmental protections; and above all, in his mind, "ending the war" in Vietnam with 'honor' by withdrawal under a guise of diplomacy. And Stone has his history right! In hindsight, Nixon was probably the best 'Democratic' president the Republicans ever elected. What his most fervent haters failed to realize was that "opportunism" is sometimes a synonym for "pragmatism." Nixon WAS a pragmatist for America, an opportunist for himself.

The dramatic climax of Nixon's career, and of this dramatization of it, was obviously Watergate, with the subsequent Constitutional turmoil and his eventual resignation. Again Oliver Stone got the basic known facts correct. His depictions of the unseen maneuvers of Nixon's staff, of his strife with Pat, and especially of Nixon's own agonistic psychological collapse are all 'artistic' liberties, speculative interpretations. Are Stone's insights legitimate? He has the art to make them seem plausible, and such artwork is/guesswork is intellectually legitimate as long as the viewer recognizes them as such. Once again in hindsight, Watergate was a paltry affair, a petty abuse of power that might have been applied to far more odious misdeeds. Stone's Nixon asserts that other presidents had pulled far sleazier stunts, used their power far more abusively, and in that he is surely accurate. Watergate was a molehill of a scandal compared to Ronald Reagan's outrageous Iran-Contra shenanigans, the most patently impeachment-worthy abuses of any president in history. But Nixon was 'hated' as vehemently as Reagan was loved. In that light, one might conclude that Nixon was fundamentally correct when he raged that 'it wasn't about the war or the nation, it was all about destroying him.' Oddly enough, Oliver Stone's Nixon isn't a cartoon monster after all; he's human enough not to be hated, although it would take an act of God to make me love him.