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100This is one of the rare movies to explore American materialism through the eyes of an all-too-ordinary person who isn't up to the challenges of everyday life.
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100What surprises us most is the picture's topicality, and not just because terrorists crashed a plane into the Pentagon three years ago.
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88Does the film have a message? I don't think it wants one. It is about the journey of a man going mad. A film can simply be a character study, as this one is.
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88The 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.
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83Director Niels Mueller's attempt to create a middle-class "Taxi Driver" (he tips his hand a bit smugly by respelling Byck's name to evoke Travis Bickle) has a creepy, meticulous exactitude.
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80Stark, bold drama.
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80Penn's lead performance is the main attraction here, and it's a fine piece of work--far superior to his overly showy Oscar-winning role last year.
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80It's a deeply affecting performance, and it drives this quietly powerful, unrelenting film.
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80The movie re-creates Sam's miserable days with enough sympathy to come within hailing distance of such emblematic works of American disillusion as Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" and Saul Bellow's "Seize the Day."
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75This riveting film qualifies as the anti-crowd-pleaser -- but Penn makes it unthinkable to turn away.
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75It features Sean Penn in a mesmerizing portrayal of the would-be hijacker.
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75A faithful portrait of a period in American social history.
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75Assassination reminds you that Penn can be very funny.
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75Re-creates the era convincingly, and, as usual, Penn is mesmerizing: a consummate movie actor at the peak of his game.
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First-time director Niels Mueller and his co-screenwriter Kevin Kennedy depict Sam's disintegration expertly and they have fashioned a well-made picture with much to like.
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70Comparisons to "Taxi Driver" are unavoidable and mostly unflattering to Mueller's film, but Assassination engages more directly with the political fissures of the time, which deeply divided the nation.
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70Moody, pretentious, but potent.
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70Powerful, haunting, but ultimately disappointing. Few American movies address abject failure as forcefully as this one, and Sean Penn delivers an intense performance as Bicke.
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67Penn's Bicke is often so pitiable it's hard not to want to look away – but what else to expect from perhaps our most compulsively watchable contemporary actor?
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67See it for the star. Penn makes a film that in many respects feels low scale and ordinary into something painfully human and real.
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63It's a tribute to Penn's talent and guts that he manages to bring it off--even if the movie doesn't.
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63The movie doesn't make you care.
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63A downer of a drama.
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63This is another movie where politics trump the narrative.
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63Sometimes, you'd swear he's (Penn) reprising his performance as a mentally handicapped man in "I Am Sam."
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60That The Assassination of Richard Nixon is as well directed, acted and shot as it is makes Mr. Mueller's inability to invest his film with significance all the more disappointing.
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60The director and co-writer, Niels Mueller, has also done his work well, but the film feels insubstantial at 95 minutes, even though -- or maybe because -- it bristles with borrowed ideas and unavoidable associations.
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50A slight movie and a major downer, is an acting showcase for Sean Penn. That's good, but not enough.
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50Even if audiences can get by the tasteless shock title, it's tough to figure who will ever watch this movie - even when it's on cable.
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50The Assassination of Richard Nixon makes Bicke suffer the greatest indignity: it turns him into a relentless bore.
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50Unfortunately, the trajectory of Mueller and co-screenwriter Kevin Kennedy's repetitive screenplay echoes "Taxi Driver" so closely as to invite unfavorable comparison with Martin Scorsese's benchmark chronicle of alienation.
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50The primary problem with The Assassination of Richard Nixon comes in its attempts to make drama out of a minor man's minor stab at infamy.
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50Penn is mostly in "I Am Sam mode" here, doing a lot of shoe-gazing and mumbly-talk, but not without adding an edge of bitter intelligence to his character; he's just too good an actor to merely repeat himself, even when the material encourages him to.
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50This often gripping but also unremittingly grim and drab account of these events is a "Taxi Driver" without the cathartic finale.
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50This is one of Penn's punishing, single-dimension performances, and it seems to be even more whiningly masochistic than what's called for in the script.
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50Penn's magnetism and hesitant line delivery create what interest there is, although the whole picture suffers from a central figure who can never get it together on any level.
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50Only moderately compelling.
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30It grinds on and on without mercy. You're in the cross hairs. There is no escape. Where is that Secret Service when you need it?
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 12
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Mixed: 1 out of 12
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Negative: 2 out of 12
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Myles#138
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JeffM.8