"The Assassination of Richard Nixon is a triumph for its star and the writers, who make us cringe with empathy for a man who taps into the latent loser in all of us." Jan Stuart NEWSDAY "Penn's agonized performance in this under-the-radar drama is better than his Oscar-winning work in Mystic River." John Wirt ADVOCATE BATON ROUGE "A meticulous, unsettling character study that is all the stronger for its verisimilitude." Eugene Novikov FILM BLATHER "Penn's lead performance is the main attraction here, and it's a fine piece of work -- far superior to his overly showy Oscar-winning role last year." Robert Wilonsky DALLAS OBSERVER "People watching Assassination 100 years from now will still marvel at its relevance." Glenn Whipp LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS

"One of the most successful attempts to tell the tale of an, ultimately, criminal person without ever forcing us to condone his crimes." Joe Utichi FILMFOCUS "This movie provides a lot of food for thought about true believers who don't mind killing people to achieve their goals." Robert Roten, LARAMIE MOVIE SCOPE "It makes for a grim time at the movies, but also a sobering one because it seeks truth, not sensationalism, in ugliness." Mark Palermo COAST HALIFAX "Penn's work is so selfless, so clean and free of anything familiar in his other work, that you sit there astonished, absorbed, held to the last frame." Bruce Kirkland JAM! MOVIES "A faithful portrait of a period in American social history and a character study of a man struggling to make sense of his life, using conflicting American myths as his guide." Mick LaSalle SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

The Inside Story

"A starkly ambitious endeavor for such a fellow, and Mueller pulls it off well, if not perfectly." Eric D Snider ERICDSNIDER.COM

He's been nominated on four occasions at the Academy Awards ["Dead Man Walking", "Sweet And Lowdown", "I Am Sam" and "Mystic River"] receiving an Oscar for his outstanding performance in "Mystic River" as the grieving father Jimmy Markum; he made his big screen debut in the 1981 film "TAPS"; made his directorial debut in 1991 with "The Indian Runner; wrote, produced and directed "The Crossing Guard" which starred Jack Nicholson; then in 2001 he produced and directed "The Pledge", casting Nicholson as retired Detective Jerry Black a man obsessed with solving a murder committed on his last working day; he went on to wow us with "I Am Sam" and the critically acclaimed "21 Grams" and if you saw "Mystic River" you'd probably have been convinced that it could n't get better than that for Mr Sean Penn. Well don't you believe it! I am sure that if [God willing] both Sean Penn and I are here in 2011 he will still be amazing me as he does in his latest film "The Assassination Of Richard Nixon" which to be honest is the most scintillating performance I've ever seen him in. The role of Samuel Bicke is one that defines Penn as more than just a consummate artisan plying his trade. This performance elevates him to the status of two great actors who are the yardstick by which dramatic performances are measured. Those two actors are of course, Al Pacino ["Scent of a Woman", "Heat", Serpico"] and Robert De Niro ["Raging Bull", "The Godfather II", ] who appeared together in "The Godfather II" and "Heat". Like Pacino and De Niro, Sean Penn isn't tall but he sure packs a punch when comes to delivering a knockout of a performance. It's also a knockout of a debut for co-writer Niels Mueller who makes his directorial debut with "The Assassination Of Richard Nixon". While the film is based on Sam Bicke, much of it is fictionalized for not a whole lot was known about this man, shot dead while hijacking a plane he planned to have the crew fly into the White House. Sound familiar? It sure does. The year though was 1974. The President was Richard Milhouse Nixon. The Watergate Scandal would erupt. The period leading up to the events had long interested Mueller. "I’d been interested for a while in what some historians refer to as ‘the decade of shock to the American system’," Mueller says. "Authors I’ve read talk about this decade, which starts in 1963 with the first Kennedy assassination, and ends in 1974 with Nixon’s resignation, as being the one in which America lost its innocence. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but the question interested me." Muellers original storyline was far from what appears in the finished product. His original effort was pure fiction and titled, "The Assassination of L.B.J" Mueller says he had written thirty pages of his script. "It was about this man who is separated from his wife and child, who takes a new sales job to re-establish himself financially –and more importantly—to re-establish himself in his wife’s eyes. He is a man who wants his wife and child back. I had him talking into a tape recorder, although I hadn’t figured out why yet. I spat out everything I had in these loose thirty pages and then I started doing research on American assassins and would-be assassins. Out of the ten books I borrowed from the Los Angeles public library, there was only one that included a slim chapter on Sam Bicke." Bicke would prove to be the ideal character for Muellers script. "I had never heard of him before," says Mueller, "since his assassination attempt went largely unnoticed and then got lost amid the brouhaha of the Watergate scandal. Sam was separated from his wife and children, struggled as a salesman to re-establish himself financially—and more importantly—to re-establish himself in his wife’s eyes. He was a man who wanted his family back. He talked, for the last month or two of his life, into a tape recorder, and then sent his tapes to, among others, Leonard Bernstein. These tapes were to be a record of the reasons for his actions." Mueller and his writing partner Kevin Kennedy used the contents of the tapes "as their primary resource material" describing them as "voice from the grave". So how much of the film is based on fact? "The whole plan to dive bomb a plane into the White House is based on fact. The assault on the airplane is taken from news accounts and F.B.I. files—shooting the co-pilot, grabbing the woman hostage, telling her to help fly the plane, releasing her after she pleads for her life, and even the manner in which Sam is shot through the window of the airplane door—all of this is true, pretty much verbatim. The news reports seen and heard at the end of the film are actual clips from CBS and NBC coverage about the hijacking," Mueller explained. So where were the changes made? "The characters around Sam, the names of the children and wife, were changed to protect rights of privacy, which we have worked very hard to respect and protect. But since "The Assassination Of Richard Nixon" is based on actual events, we felt it was important to use the true name of Nixon’s would-be assassin, as reported in the actual CBS and NBC news segments that are shown at the end of the film. The name ‘Sam Bicke’ wasn’t chosen, it’s a true name [albeit spelled differently for reasons of privacy] that can be verified by watching actual footage and reading historical records." Its a dark, fascinating story of Samuel 'Sam' Bicke's mental decline and the events which sent him down a path of self destructionand Sean Penn pulls it off brilliantly. Mueller notes that when the project was first announced in 1999, well before the events of 9/11, Penn was committed to the film "and never wavered." What makes the story of Bicke all the more powerful and tragic is those events of 9/11, something that wasn't lost on Mueller. "The script, and thus the film, has taken on an increased relevance, eerily so, since it was first written," he says. "I always felt the film was somehow timeless. Sam has unfortunate counterparts in the many people who lash out in indiscriminate violence today. But, that the film would become SUCH a mirror of contemporary society and history is a bit mind-boggling. And ultimately, it’s this mirror; the similarities between the America depicted in the film and America today. That is important to me, and I hope to the film-going audience at large." And speaking of large, there is an 'aussie' connection in the film. The first is the larger than life performance by Jack Thompson as Bicke's boss, Jack Jones. It's a performance not to be missed and one which will throw Thompson back into the spotlight and ensure we see Jack in more feature films. The other aussie connection comes from Naomi Watts who appeared with Penn in the film "21 Grams". While hers is not a huge role, it is an important one and she too handles it well. 2005 Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle who is currently appearing on screens in "Crash" plays the role of Bonny Simmons an auto mechanic who Bicke plans to form a partnership with. Bonny is a black man who knows how 'whities' rules work. Bicke sees him as a black man being oppressed because of his colour. It is through this 'racial' connection that Bicke makes an approach the Black Panthers. The moments he spends in the Panthers office are priceless. "The Assassination Of Richard Nixon" is a powerful film with a powerful message. Highly Recommended. Casting About "THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON" stars .......
Academy Award winner Sean Penn ["Taps", "Fast Times At Ridgemont High", "Carlito's Way", "I Am Sam" and "Mystic River"]; Don Cheadle ["Ocean's Eleven", "Ocean's Twelve", "After The Sunset", "Crash" and "Hotel Rwanda"]; Naoimi Watts ["The Ring I & II", "Le Divorce", "21 Grams" and "We Don't Live Here Anymore"]; Brad William Henke ["The Fan", "Space Jam", "The Thirteenth Floor" and "Me and You and Everyone We Know"]; Nick Searcy ["Days of Thunder", "Fried Green Tomatoes", "The Fugitive" and "Tigerland"]; Michael Wincott ["The Crow", "Alien: Resurrection", "Before Night Falls" and "Along Came a Spider"]; April Grace ["Bean", "Finding Forrester", "Artificial Intelligence: AI" and "Constantine"] and Jack Thompson ["Last Dance", "Under the Lighthouse Dancing", "Yolngu Boy", "Star Wars Episode II" and "Oyster Farmer"] as Jack Jones. Crew Bytes "THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON" was .......
directed by Niels Mueller ["The Assassination Of Richard Nixon"]; screenplay by Niels Mueller ["Tadpole" and "Sweet Nothing"] and Kevin Kennedy ["Curfew" and "Sam The Man"]; costume design by Aggie Guerard Rodgers ["Grand Canyon", "The Fugitive", "Mr. Holland's Opus", "The Hurricane", "Evolution" and "Raise Your Voice"]; production design by Lester Cohen ["Salvation!", "Jersey Girl", "Cop Land" and "Knockaround Guys"]; edited by Jay Cassidy ["The Indian Runner", "The Crossing Guard", "The Replacement Killers", "The Pledge" and "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever"]; cinematography Emmanuel Lubezki ["Meet Joe Black", "Ali", "The Cat In The Hat" and "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events"]; original music by Steven M Stern ["Call Girl", "Indecent Behavior III", "Indiscreet" and "D.E.B.S."] produced by Alfonso Cuarón ["Love in the Time of Hysteria", "Y tu mamá también", "Child's Play" and "Chronicles"] and Jorge Vergara ["You Owe Me One", "Y tu mamá tambié" and "Chronicles"]. What It's All About

"This is one of the rare movies to explore American materialism through the eyes of an all-too-ordinary person who isn't up to the challenges of everyday life." David Sterritt CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Sam Bicke is seperated from his wife and kids. After losing a number of jobs he takes a sales position with a furniture company and under the guidance of his boss Jack Jones appears to be back on the straight and narrow. He's cleaned himself up and paying a little more financial support to his estranged wife. He has high hopes that he can get his family back again. But Sam Bicke is a troubled man. His boss Mr Jones, is manipulating him with his customers and Sam feels as though he's being forced to be dishonest. To compromise his integrity to get a sale. He feels like a cheat and a liar. It plays on his mind and only serves to frustrate and anger him. Then he discovers his wife is seeing another man. It adds weight to his condition. Sam Bicke is falling apart. When his boss tells him that President Nixon is the best saleman of all time because he sold the American people on re-electing him by lying. Sam suddenly finds a target for his troubled mind. Now he is determined to right the wrongs that he feels are affecting the nation. He will kill President Nixon. Not with a gun. He'll use a passenger plane. The Verdict "The only thing I can say to describe Sean Penns incredibly intense performance is that it matches the mood of a film he directed. It starred Jack Nicholson and it was called "The Pledge". The character of Samuel Bicke is a reflection of the many moods and seasons of that film. Mr Penn, you are a genius. A living breathing genius. Highly Recommended." The Cast

Sean Penn Naomi Watts Don Cheadle Jack Thompson Brad Henke Nick Searcy Michael Wincott Mykelti Williamson April Grace Lily Knight Jared Dorrance Jenna Milton Mariah Massa Eileen Ryan Derek Greene Joe Marinelli Tracy Lynn Middendorf Kenneth White Brett Rickaby James Morrison Reese Frank Brown Jr James D Carraway Jay Jacobus J C MacKenzie Kathryn Howell Denise Balthrop Cassidy Gary Mack Melissa Saltzman

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Samuel Bicke Marie Bicke Bonny Simmons Jack Jones Martin Jones Tom Ford Julius Bicke Harold Mann Mae Simmons Receptionist Sammy Jr Ellen Julie Marie's Mother Joey Simmons Mel Samuels Businesswoman Customer Customer Customer Customer Customer Customer Co-Pilot Hostage Bank Teller Security Man Boarding Agent

The Crew Directed by Niels Mueller Written by Kevin Kennedy & Niels Mueller Produced by Alfonso Cuarón & Jorge Vergara Original Music by Steven M Stern Cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki Film Editing by Jay Cassidy Casting by Mali Finn Production Design by Lester Cohen Set Decoration by Barbara Munch Costume Design by Aggie Guerard Rodgers Production Manager Debra Grieco Run Time 95 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2005 - Thinkfilm Inc - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2005 - Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved