Nixon Details

Near the end of this biographical drama, the disgraced President gazes at a painting of John Kennedy and says, “When people look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.” That's a great line, the key to Oliver Stone's movie, which, like his earlier JFK, is three hours of brilliance, provocation and information overload. Stone sees Nixon as a man suffering from paranoia, haunted by the spectre of two dead Kennedys and by his own dead brothers, yet devoted to his wife, a role beautifully played by Joan Allen. The movie makes great demands on the viewer and on Anthony Hopkins, whose brave performance is more an impression than an impersonation. At one point, Paul Sorvino's sinister Henry Kissinger says, “He had greatness within his grasp but he had the defects of his qualities.” Much the same can be said of this mesmerising, infuriating movie.

A boldly conceived film on the corruption of power. It attempts to cast Nixon as the protagonist of a tragedy in a Shakespearean mould Ð like Macbeth, he clambers over the dead bodies of others to seize power and to retain it. While the film fails to show