PieMuncher – Movie Review and more

Movie: The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004)

• Director: Niels Mueller
• Release Date: 22 October 2004 (Greece)
• Writers: Kevin Kennedy (written by) Niels Mueller (written by)
• Run Time: 95 min
• Country: USA , Mexico
• Genre: Biography , Crime , Drama , History , Thriller  
• MPAA: Rated R for language and a scene of graphic violence. (also edited version)

Tagline: The mad story of a true man.  

Trivia: Sean Penn was attached to this project for six years before they found the financing for it.
 

Goofs: Anachronisms: The news on TV first shows the speech of President Richard Nixon answering the House Judiciary Committee Subpoena for Additional Presidential Tape Recordings where he says “the boil must be pricked” from April 29, 1974. Later in the movie the news mentions Robert Preston landing a helicopter on the lawn at the White House the previous evening but that event occurred on February 17, 1974.
 

“In 1974 Samuel Joseph Byck attempted to hijack a plane he intended to fly into the White House to kill Richard Nixon – possibly the first time an airliner was to be used as a flying bomb in a terrorist attack. Sam Bicke is a lonely, ineffectual incompetent who feels wronged by his family, friends, employers and the world in general, though his problems are largely of his own making and his petulant refusal to compromise what he sees as his ‘values’. Thus he loses his job rather than ‘lie’ to customers about prices, while at the same time he continuously deceives his friends, and steals from his friend and his brother. Elaborate plans for success founder on equally avoidable issues. As his world falls apart, he fantasizes Richard Nixon (then under the shadow of Watergate and soon to leave office) as his ultimate enemy, and Leonard Bernstein (to whom he dictates endless self-exculpatory audio letters) as his only friend and equal. As a bleak future closes in, Bicke mounts the assassination – with characteristic incompetence. Written by Chris Davis”