This will kick the happy out of you

Catholic New Times, April 10, 2005 by Patrick Donohue

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004, starring Sean Penn, 95 mins.)

Let's say you've been finding life far too pleasant and enjoyable lately. You're looking for something to kick the happy out of you. This could be the movie you need.

Based to some extent on actual events, it charts the machinations of one Sam Bicke, a loser, would-be salesman who comes up with a grandiose scheme (check the title) to prove that even "one tiny grain of sand on the beach of life" can have an huge impact.

What makes this story so depressing is that Sam, as played by Sean Penn, isn't your average wacko. He's essentially a decent guy--not to say that he's overly-endowed with charm or intelligence--who can't understand why he keeps losing out on the American dream.

There's a kind of innocence about him. For instance, the thing that gets in the way of his being a good salesman is that he can't stand the lying. Mind you that doesn't preclude a bit of larceny on his part. You can see that he's still torn by love for his estranged wife and kids. The whole movie unrolls in flashback as Sam's narration of his story into a tape that he's sending to Leonard Bernstein. Why him as confessor? Because Sam finds Maestro Bernstein's performances of Beethoven so pure.

Sean Penn has some great scenes as this frustrated little guy. The routine that he performs to get a loan from a skeptical bank manager is a virtuoso bit of shtick. His final encounter with a boss who fired him is mesmerizing. And yet, I can never quite forget that I'm watching the great actor, Sean Penn. He never seems to fade into the ordinary guy the script calls for. Maybe that's because he sometimes seems to be acting a bit too much: too many ticks and mannerisms. That cagey, revealing smile comes just when you think it should, rather than when you're not expecting it.

Some of the actors in smaller parts are terrifically convincing. Jack Thompson plays Sam's boss, a beefy heart-attack-waiting-to-happen, a guy who's not particularly honest or well-meaning, but not an especially bad guy either--in Other words, a very real person. I didn't catch the name of the actor who plays Sam's older brother. He has only one scene but he brings to it a complex but credible bundle of feelings: thwarted affection, regret, and, ultimately, contempt.

The movie re-creates the ambiance of 1974 Baltimore with lots of authentic detail (rotary phones, gawdawful clothes, big-boat automobiles) with a few exceptions. Did people who had very little income actually inhabit such expansive houses and apartments in those days? In the 1970s people had not yet developed the habit of prefacing hostile remarks with "Y'know what...." And the expression "Get a life" had not yet got a life.

Those quibbles aside, you want to give this movie high marks because it's so relentlessly honest and unsentimental. There's no pandering to the Hollywood market here. But it's so damned bleak. With a really great tragedy, you come away feeling that you've learned something, that you've had a healing catharsis. I can't say that happens here. It all feels so hopeless; the violence of the ending is brutal and senseless.

You keep wondering why everything had to go so badly for Sam. Could anything have been done to stop his downward spiral? At one point, his brother says that Sam always was strange. Maybe there aren't any satisfying answers, but the fact that the movie makes you ask those questions counts for a lot with me.

Patrick Donohue is a freelance writer in Toronto. www.dilettantesdiary.com