On Feb. 22, 1974, Samuel Byck, a onetime tire salesman and failing family man, entered the ranks of pseudo-celebrity by trying to commandeer a commercial airliner and crash it into the White House. He didn't get far, which is why the man who would be Booth is a footnote to history rather than a chapter and is best known as one of the title characters in the Stephen Sondheim musical Assassins. Of course, the target of Byck's psychotic rage, Richard Nixon, had already launched his own attack on the White House, and within six months of the bungled assault, the 37th president of the US resigned from office.
The strange details of Byck's case, interesting in and of themselves, don't add up to much in The Assassination of Richard Nixon. And here's the other reason I bring up Cannes: the film reaffirms that the greatest problem facing American cinema isn't that its movies are in thrall to violence or in the grip of the accountants. The problem is that not enough American filmmakers have anything they need to say.
Few are engaged in larger conversations about the movies and the world; most don't even seem aware that such conversations exist, which may explain why their films lack urgency. Unlike the directors of The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11 and those who make their mark at Cannes these filmmakers aren't on a mission.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GROUP POWER
Because there's no discernible point to The Assassination of Richard Nixon, no sense of larger purpose, the film has only craft and technique to recommend it. It has both, certainly. Penn, as is his wont, acts up a storm with the aid of some facial embellishment, in this case a mustache that broadcasts the fanfare for the common man with all the discretion of Aaron Copland. The mustache, along with Byck's cheap suits, sullen children, estranged wife (Naomi Watts) and clammy sincerity, mark him for tragedy. But Mueller wrings neither tragedy nor meaning from his character.
In other words, Mueller's Byck is a collection of symptoms without a diagnosis. That The Assassination of Richard Nixon is as well directed, acted and shot as it is makes Mueller's inability to invest his film with significance all the more disappointing. A project like this one, filled with promise and propped up by talent like Penn, Watts and Don Cheadle, who has a small part as Byck's only friend, brings with it the expectation that we will get something to chew on after the final credits roll.
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