Nixon (1995)
Directed by Oliver Stone
A look at President Richard M. Nixon—a man carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders while battling the self-destructive demands from within—spanning his troubled boyhood in California to the shocking Watergate scandal that would end his Presidency.
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What critics compared Nixon to
“Snowden,” which Stone and co-writer Kieran Fitzgerald adapted from two books about the real-life figure, turns out to be a relatively straightforward, sober-minded, even somewhat restrained film, a far more classical and conventional piece of filmmaking than the kaleidoscopic, conspiracy-minded “ JFK ” or the Shakespearean gloom of “ Nixon .”
By tackling the story of Edward Snowden, the conservative, buttoned-up CIA analyst and self-proclaimed patriot who blew the whistle on the U.S. government’s massive surveillance of its own citizens, Stone places himself solidly back in the kind of territory he mined so brilliantly in some of his very best films: JFK, Born on the Fourth of July and Nixon.
There is none of the colour and bravura of his other true-life films from JFK to Nixon to W, via The Doors.
First came 2008’s W., a spiritual sequel to Nixon; then came 2010’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a literal sequel to Wall Street; most recently was 2012’s Savages, a rather desperate attempt to recapture the extremity of Natural Born Killers.
Just as Clint Eastwood was a slam-dunk of a choice to direct “Sully,” who better (or in some eyes, worse) than master filmmaker/agitator/conspiracy theorist/rebel Oliver Stone (“Born on the Fourth of July,” “JFK,” “Nixon,” “W.,”) to helm the story of the twentysomething techno-whiz who leaked thousands of classified documents in the name of exposing the NSA for trampling on the rights of its citizens?
Like few other modern American films, perhaps -- Oliver Stone's sometimes hallucinogenic "Natural Born Killers" and "Nixon," Ang Lee's much-maligned "Hulk" -- "Speed Racer" breaks and remakes the rules of composition and editing to tell its story in a different way.
There are two, maybe three, Oliver Stones: the revisionist historian who drives Washington literalists batty with such lurid re-imaginings as “ JFK ” and “ Nixon ,” the straight-ahead mainstream auteur who limns the American experience in such magisterial dramas as “ Born on the Fourth of July ” and “ Platoon ,” and the all-to-the-wall hellion who extrudes that same experience through hallucinatory dreamscapes and lurid violence in genre films such as “ Natural Born Killers .”
…t’s been a while since Oliver Stone directed a movie that was actually worth caring about; you’d probably have to go as far back as “Nixon” to find the last instance, although I have a soft spot for “Any Given Sunday.”
As Savages flailed merrily to its erratic, muddled conclusion, I wondered if this was the Oliver Stone mode I really preferred — or whether we wouldn’t be better off with, say, the likes of the equally bombastic but more tightly crafted Nixon or Wall Street.
Granted, for someone who started so strong, who guided Scarface with his words and Platoon, Salvador, and Nixon with his vision, anything may seem like a letdown.
And when he's not busy rewriting history (Nixon, W., JFK) or examining war (Platoon) or football (Any Given Sunday) or finance (Wall Street) or 9/11 (World Trade Center), the prolific filmmaker screeches his car wheels back onto B-movie turf: drugs, sex, and guns.
It's a lot to deal with narratively and thematically, and the script by Steven Knight ("Locke," "Eastern Promises"), who rewrote the original draft by Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson (the pair have plenty of biopic experience under their belts with "Nixon" and "Ali") doesn't always get everything across clearly.
The real Fischer was taller than his opponent, and blonde, but director Ed Zwick (Glory)—working from a schematic script by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) and Stephen J. Rivele (Nixon)—sees this chess master as a kind of mousy everyman, cracking under the stress of competing ideologies.
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But just because there are no "JFK" or "Nixon" conspiracy theories here, don't think this nightmarish trip through paranoia-ville is any more mainstream in its approach than his past few films.
But signs emerged in the reckless satiric tone of Natural Born Killers and ambivalent moral judgment of Nixon that Stone was growing dissatisfied with the righteous declamation of earlier films such as JFK and Born on the Fourth of July.