Nixon - Collector's Edition
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DVD details
Actor: Brian Bedford, Joan Allen, Kevin Dunn, Powers Boothe, Tom BowerBrand: HOPKINS,ANTHONY
Primary Contributor: Joan Allen
Primary Contributor: Anthony Hopkins
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); Russian (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 192 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-03-12
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Walt Disney Video
DVD Reviews of Nixon - Collector's Edition
DVD Review: A Very Flawed Film about a Very Flawed Man
Summary: 3 Stars
With "Nixon" director Oliver Stone aims for the next "Citizen Kane," and he proves he's no Orson Welles.
It seems odd that a movie sequel can be more melodramatic than its antecedent of fifty years ago but that's exactly the case here, a case made definite by Stone's silly juvenile plagiarism of Kane's beginning. In "Citizen Kane" there's the ominous dark cavernous mansion that bespeaks of a life so grand yet ultimately so empty, followed by the rush of reporters in a newsroom determined to discover the secret of "Rosewood." "Nixon" begins with the Watergate burglars meeting and planning, and then transitions to the White House on a dark night overlaid with ominous music, and then finally to a defeated and alone Richard M. Nixon (Anthony Hopkins).
If Oliver Stone were to simply maintain this blatant plagiarism he would at worst be called a plagiarist, which is not really an offense in Hollywood or in life. Yet he trusts his intelligence and his taste and his instincts to create a powerful drama, and he shows that he lacks in all three.
Consider Richard Nixon's historic meeting with Chairman Mao, who looks and speaks like the devil. "You are as evil as I am," Mao tells Nixon. The melodrama and implausibility of the scene aren't enough for Stone: he has to overlay the scene with Chinese calligraphy and screamingly annoying music.
In the beginning of the movie Mr. Stone has the courtesy to tell us that some scenes are redacted, shortened, or just dramatized from real life -- which is his most comic conceit because it's clear that MOST of the scenes have been imagined. Clearly Oliver Stone believes he is re-making "Citizen Kane," and it is his duty to history to set the record straight once and for all about Nixon.
Thus, we should know that Richard Nixon was fundamentally an amoral man whose conscience was his saintly mother (Mary Steenburgen), and then his mother's surrogate and wife Pat (Joan Allen). Indeed Pat Nixon is the film's moral center of gravity, and it is when she finally in 1968 relents to Nixon's relentless political ambition that she loses her moral authority and Nixon fall aparts.
We should also know that Nixon's presidency was borne of the death of four people, and it was this that haunted Nixon and permitted him as president to sacrifice without remorse Cambodians, student demonstrators, and finally his own loyal White House staff. Tuberculosis killed Nixon's two brothers and permitted Nixon to attend law school, and Nixon's two deadliest political adversaries -- John and Robert Kennedy -- were conveniently assassinated.
In fact Nixon, as the film claims, may have been indirectly responsible for JFK's death by being as Eisenhower's vice-president chair of a secret committee that sanctioned the killing of world leaders sympathetic to communism. As the CIA's Jesse Helms (Sam Waterson) explains to Nixon in one of the film's most outrageously implausible and embarassing scenes, what they created was "organic" and "had a life of its own": no one could have predicted these same individuals they had unleashed to kill Castro would have come back to kill Kennedy -- but then again no one made Nixon attach his name to documents linking him to these murderers.
Stone tries to display different facets of Nixon's personality -- his outrageous paranoia, his self-hatred, his sexual insecurity and jealousy -- but what he best shows is Nixon's pettiness and shallowness and arrogance. And it may be because, despite Stone's professed high-brow cultural impact with his films "Platoon," "Wall Street," and "Natural Born Killers," he is ultimately a petty and shallow and arrogant director. The film in its bloated morality and heavy-handedness treats movie-goers as children to be taught and admonished, as Nixon's mother once taught and admonished him and as Nixon taught and admonished the American people.
"Nixon" is a very flawed film of a very flawed man, and shows a director who we once respected to be very flawed as well.
DVD Review: Better than JFK
Summary: 3 Stars
Both JFK and Nixon reveal the director to be an obsessive paranoid personality. Nixon drags. DVD Review: Great actors, screenplay by DNC
Summary: 2 Stars
It's a shame that Oliver Stone's inner demons are wasted on this 3 1/2 hour bloated mess. Very little of this movie is based on fact. It looks like it was written by every Democrat official and Hollywood activist who hated Nixon. Despite the movie's deadly length, there is very little here about Nixon's real accomplishments. Instead, it's one long hate-fest from the Democratic National Committee.
I recommend reading some books on Nixon to get a real picture of the man. Nixon did not "invade" Cambodia, the murderous North Vietnamese invaded that poor country first, and used it as a supply depot. He did not say "C-sucker" 6 trillion times a minute. Mrs. Nixon was not a dishrag. The story is about as accurate as the "Futurama" cartoon episode where Nixon's head goes on a robot rampage.
It is sad that those on the left are still rotting with hatred for the man. Can you imagine what a Republican film on President Obama would look like? Would it spend an hour documenting his failure in obtaining the Olympics for Chicago? No president deserves the hatchet job this movie presents. I guess we'll have to wait for Stone's next movie where Presidents Kennedy and Johnson are shown wiretapping DOMESTIC political enemies. Keep on waiting!
DVD Review: Enlightening but Chaotic
Summary: 4 Stars
The first hour of this film, after a brief introduction to set the basis of the storyline for the viewer, is a flashback that displays the depth of the subject of this film. The rapid fire nature of the topics that are dealt with forces the viewer to piece together events on the fly, which I am sure was the case during these troubling times.
The approach that Mr. Stone takes to this story telling should be considered an artistic interpretation of what these times really were. The character development of Nixon shows a possible loss of contact with reality.
In a subplot, this film also deals briefly with a familiar subject for Mr. Stone, the Vietnam War.
DVD Review: Probably Stone's best political drama, In a great Blu-Ray edition
Summary: 5 Stars
The Film:
Let me say right now by way of disclosure: I love Oliver Stone films. I don't think he's the "conspiracy nut" he's often painted as. I do think he is a biased historian. He has an ideological axe to grind, especially insofar as American politics are concerned. But it's easy enough to detect and set aside (if you want to), and nonetheless he is a stunningly talented filmmaker.
"Nixon" presents probably the best of Stone's "presidential" films (JFK, Nixon, W.). It contains a spectacular performance by its principal character (Anthony Hopkins), and a great set of supporting players, as per usual in Stone's films (particular standouts include Bob Hoskins as J. Edgar Hoover, James Woods as Bob Haldeman, Paul Sorvino as Henry Kissinger, and Joan Allen as Pat Nixon). Hopkins does something amazing - without directly aping every little thing about Nixon, he portrays the inner Nixon so well that he ends up replacing the original in the mind of the viewer, to the point that when at the end Stone shows us the real Nixon's farewell helicopter ride, it is phenomenally bizarre to see someone else as Nixon.
Stone weaves a story of Nixon as a sympathetic, troubled, perennially downtrodden little guy who claws his way into power through tenacity, dirty tricks, perseverance, and canny manipulation of current events. Nixon is a man who has the highest aspirations of power, and is brought to the lowest possible point through his own frailties, paranoia, and personal demons. Stone at once makes him sympathetic and demonic.
I think Stone is a humanist, and a person who is seeking the truth. His humanism puts him at odds with those who would use mass populations as pawns and destroy vast populations for policy objectives - but it also drives him to seek what is human in these sorts of manipulators. He seeks to tell the truth - the human truth - of the events and the times he focuses on. He uses different kinds of footage, and compresses times and conversations, creating montages, almost collages, of images and words that evoke the spirit of a time.
"Nixon" may well be Stone at his best in this art of collage film-making. It is utterly absorbing, despite its 3.5 hour heft, to anyone who enjoys deep character drama, and of course any political history aficionado.
The Blu-Ray:
At its best, this HD transfer presents images of amazing detail. Certain scenes show incredible facial detail, with pores, whiskers, fine lines, and the like shown in pristine clarity. But, as with many Stone film, detail is often obscured by intentional choices on his part - so many types of video sources are used, from 35mm to 8mm, TV broadcasts, all kinds of material with all different levels of inherent detail. This Blu-Ray displays them all probably as well as they'll ever be displayed. Whatever grain is inherent in the source image is always faithfully presented, never scrubbed away by excessive DNR. So, no, this is not a transfer you'll want to choose to really blow away a viewer with "HD" quality (try Stone's "Alexander" for that). But it's faithful, and as the film works on you for its 3.5 hours, I think most viewers will appreciate it.
Audio is an uncompressed Dolby Digital 5.1ch mix. It does a fine job presenting the sometimes booming soundscape Stone employs with all of his complex cuts from dialogue scenes to documentary shots and pictures of war. Dialogue is never drowned out, and John Williams' score comes through very nicely.
Stone has recorded two commentaries for the film, one dealing with the movie-making end of things, one dealing with the political backdrop of the age. Both are entertaining, as per usual with Stone commentaries. Sometimes there are gaps (heh heh), but when he is speaking he is always lucid and informative.
The second disc has a wealth of extras. 58 minutes of deleted scenes (more like 30, when you cut out Stone's explanations and the contextual bits of the actual film) are presented in 480p. Most of them have been reintegrated into the director's cut on the main disc however. So this is more interesting for Stone's intro than anything else. A 35-minute HD documentary by Sean Stone is the new item here, collecting many big-wigs discussing the pros and cons of the film. An hour-long Charlie Rose interview with Stone presents a deep and occasionally tense conversation between a master interviewer and a master filmmaker. Overall, it's a pretty good slate of extras.
**********
If you're a fan of Stone and you have a Blu-Ray player, you need this disc, pure and simple. It's an essential part of any Oliver Stone collection.
Fans of biopics should give this a hard look, too. This may not be a movie for those who dig Vin Diesel movies (not that there's anything wrong with that).
For my part, it's something I watch every year or two. It rewards multiple viewings in the way that dense Oliver Stone films can. With this Blu-Ray edition, I now have the best possible video quality and a great set of extras.
Description of Nixon - Collector's Edition
Anthony Hopkins electrifies the screen in NIXON -- the acclaimed hit from controversial director Oliver Stone. Nominated for 4 Academy Awards(R), NIXON takes a riveting look at a complex man whose chance of greatness was ultimately destroyed by his passion for power -- when his involvement in conspiracy jeopardized the nation's security and the presidency of the United States! With a phenomenal all-star cast, featuring Ed Harris, James Woods, and Joan Allen, NIXON is powerful motion picture entertainment you won't want to miss! Also included: exclusive never-before-seen footage, plus an Oliver Stone interview!Oliver Stone's controversial drama about the Nixon years in the White House stars Anthony Hopkins in a genuinely great performance as the scandal-plagued president. The film attempts to wed suggestions of Nixon's formative experiences as a boy to his political connections with shady movers and shakers and finally to his self-destructive tenure in the Oval Office. The Watergate scandal is revisited rather impressionistically--it may be hard for viewers who weren't alive then to get a sense of what the crisis was about. The parade of stars playing figures in Nixon's orbit--J.T. Walsh as John Ehrlichman, James Woods as Bob Haldeman, David Hyde Pierce as John Dean, etc.--is fun if a tad distracting. Joan Allen got a well-deserved Oscar nomination as First Lady Pat Nixon, and Hopkins got one as well. --Tom Keogh
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