Hugely under-rated movie. Made..way back in 2004. Sean Penn plays Sam Bicke..a guy who is unraveling mentally during the course of this extremely well made and interesting film. Part of Sams problem is he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Yet he is fundamentally (almost obsessively) honest. When he starts to lose the important things..(marriage, job, respect), his mind enters free-fall. He has a fascination about the lies Richard Nixon told..so he could be President. What Sam does not understand is, its not only Nixon who is corrupt, but America. Eventually that truism also enters his slow intellect. From that point Sam needs to do something. O.K. he reasons i am only a grain of sand in this world..but i can be somebody. The movie has very few flaws and Naomi Watts, Don Cheadle and Jack Thompson are great in there supporting roles. I only heard about this movie a month ago (it was not a big hit), but, it is WAY above average. Penns performance is totally brilliant.

Based on the true story of Sam Bicke (Sean Penn), a deeply troubled man who in 1974 planned to assassinate U.S President Richard Nixon by hijacking a plane and flying it into the White House. Niels Muller's brave post 9/11 film delves deep into Sam's world to reveal a tormented soul struggling with a wayward perspective on life. Sam wants to live the American dream, but is constantly derailed by his own inability to function within conventional parameters. Sam sees injustice everywhere and it spills over so much as to damage the key relationships in his life. In many ways,and not just by name, Sam is reminiscent of the self destructive Travis Bickle from Martin Scorcese's 'Taxi Diver'. Bickle's warped perspective and one man mission to make a stand against the system is echoed all the more by the 70′s period and political backdrop. Sean Penn is sensational as Sam, provoking feelings of pity as he's taunted by his boss and shunned by his estranged wife, yet also manages to perfectly capture the essence of a man on the fringes of sanity with frightening accuracy. Penn is well supported by a trio of fine performances from Don Cheadle, Naomi Watts and Jack Thompson. Knowing nothing about the real life events, i found myself drawn fully into this unsettling story of a paranoid delusional man. Everything from script, direction to acting is fully top notch and although it could never achieve the classic cult status of Taxi Driver, it stands strong as a first rate character piece.

I'm not sure what it is about Sean Penn that inspires this in me, but there's a lot of me that really doesn't want to like him. I approach pretty much every movie he's in with a pre-conceived chip on my shoulder, and then the movie starts and Penn proceeds to knock the chip off my shoulder with yet another brilliant performance. "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" was no exception. Based on real events (and from what I've been able to dig up on the events the movie is for the most part a remarkably accurate portrayal), this movie may feature Penn's strongest performance. I thought he was great in "Milk" and "I Am Sam" and "Mystic River" but this performance can't be ranked far behind those, it it can be ranked behind them at all.Here, Penn plays Sam Bicke (the real person on whom the character is based spelled the last name Byck). Bicke is a guy who struggles with life. As the movie opens we find that his marriage has fallen apart and that he has trouble holding down a job (apparently having been fired by his own brother at the family's tire store.) But Bicke is also someone who can't take responsibility for his failures. He blames those around him, but never himself. Developing a dream to open a mobile tire-selling business, he applies for a government loan to get started, but gets turned down. As he spirals farther and farther out of control (and Penn depicted this gradual emotional and mental erosion brilliantly) he becomes convinced that now the US Government is out to get him, and in revenge he concocts a plan to hijack an airplane and force the pilots to fly into the White House to kill President Nixon. It's one assassination attempt that I wasn't familiar with until watching this movie.Bicke is a strange character - and not just because he's unbalanced. For a while (for most of the movie actually) you feel a degree of sympathy for him. His life has gone to hell, and while he blames everyone around him he doesn't actually hurt them, although he rather creepily stalks his ex-wife both at her home and her workplace. But the story manages to pull that sympathy away (probably starting with the scene in which he kills his dog, the only creature in his life who actually seemed to care about him) and by the end he becomes little more than a monster as he storms an airplane and embarks on a shooting rampage. The emotional impact of the movie (and the gut reaction against Bicke as his plan develops) undoubtedly is heightened by the eerie similarity of his plot with that of the 9/11 hijackers, although the movie was apparently conceived well before 9/11, so the connection is just in the gut of the viewer but wasn't in the minds of the movie-makers, at least at first.Penn dominates the movie. The rest of the cast is solid, and there are no disappointments that come up because of the cast. You wonder for a while how this is going to get to where the title implies it's going (also implied by repeated video clips of Nixon speaking which apparently convince Bicke that the President is his enemy) but the buildup is interesting and the movie (at 1:35) isn't really long enough to ever start to drag. Overall, it's a very well done movie about a little known historical event. (7/10)

1974. Sean Penn gives one of his best, most gripping and credible performances to date as Samuel J. Bicke, a bitter, disaffected and painfully ineffectual everyman loser whose life is rapidly falling apart: His fed-up ex-wife Marie (superbly played by Niomi Watts) wants to finalize their divorce, he's faltering at his job as a furniture salesman, and his attempt at starting his own business proves to be both abortive and ill-advised. Increasingly angry and frustrated, Bicke comes up with a desperate plan to hijack a plane and fly it into the Whitehouse in order to make things right. Director/co-writer Niels Mueller delivers an undeniably dark and upsetting, yet still potent and riveting portrait of a sad bumbler and his total descent into madness and despair. Moreover, this movie articulates a powerful and provocative message about the unfairness of the American system and how having the American Dream isn't an easily obtainable goal everyone can effectively accomplish. Granted, this picture becomes more grim and depressing as it progresses towards its startling downbeat conclusion, but fortunately there are a few surprising moments of inspired dry humor, with Bicke's proposal to Black Panther leader Harold Mann (the always fine Mykelti Williamson) that he changes the group's name to the Zebras and allow whites to be able to join rating as a small gem. Penn really gets under the skin of the timid, oversensitive and incompetent Bicke; he captures the man's pain and anguish with bracing pathos and acuity. The supporting cast is likewise top-notch, with outstanding contributions from Don Cheadle as Bicke's loyal friend Bonny Simmons, Jack Thompson as Bicke's jolly, bearish no-nonsense boss Jack Jones, and Michael Wincott as Bicke's hard-nosed brother Julius. Emmanuel Lubezki's polished cinematography and Steven Stern's spare, moody score, and the meticulous evocation of the 70's are all up to speed. But what really makes this movie work so well is its admirable refusal to either explain or sentimentalize Sam Bicke; the film just shows you this poor feckless man as he is and let's you make up your own mind want to think about him. An absolute powerhouse.