The original three-hour-plus
cut of Oliver Stone's Nixon had its share of problems, but
excessive brevity wasn't among them. So it seems sadistic that the front cover
of the new, two-disc "Election Year Edition" director's cut boasts that 28 more
minutes have been added onto an already-bloated film. With that wholly
unnecessary new material, Nixon has devolved from overlong to
interminable.
Attacking
Nixon's tortured psyche and legacy with the same flair for subtlety he brought
to his screenplay for Scarface, Stone casts Anthony
Hopkins as the disgraced president, a man of humble origins who rose to the
pinnacle of political power, only to be undone by his demons. He's ably abetted
by Joan Allen as Nixon's birdlike yet deceptively strong wife Pat, as well as
just about every great character actor in existence, chief among them Bob
Hoskins as a bulldoggish J. Edgar Hoover; Sam Waterston as a haughty, imperial CIA
kingpin; Ed Harris' shark-like E. Howard Hunt; and Powers Boothe's coldly
Machiavellian Alexander Haig.
Using the
overwrought stylistic techniques Stone has beaten into the ground for the last
two decades, Nixon leaps madly across the timeline, opening with
Watergate, jumping back to Nixon's signature triumphs and defeats, and
artlessly unpacking reams of clumsy exposition via constant news reports.
Though affecting in its few quiet moments, Nixon veers
regularly into camp. The frenzied cutting suggests an unintentional parody of
avant-garde. It's a gothic political horror movie of sorts, historical Grand
Guignol in which Mao Tse-tung is shot like a silent-movie villain, the White
House portrait of Abraham Lincoln looks vaguely satanic, and a ghostly vision
of Nixon's dead mother (Mary Steenburgen) pops up during a moment of crisis
like old Mother Bates. While Hopkins looks and sounds little like the man he's
portraying, he's a respectable addition to the overflowing canon of cinematic
Nixons. But his performance pales in comparison to that of Philip Baker Hall's
definitive Nixon in Robert Altman's 1984 masterpiece Secret Honor, a film that
said 10 times as much about its subject as Stone's film, in well under half the
time.
Key features: For
masochists, there two separate Oliver Stone audio commentaries, deleted scenes
(really?), and a new documentary from Stone's son Sean.