Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A look at President Richard M. Nixon—a man carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders while battling the self-destructive demands from within—spanning his troubled boyhood in California to the shocking Watergate scandal that would end his Presidency.
Oliver Stone's Nixon is a sprawling, ambitious biographical epic that benefits enormously from Anthony Hopkins's towering central performance and a strong supporting cast including Joan Allen and James Woods. Stone's direction is characteristically audacious—mixing film stocks, archival footage, and fragmented chronology to create an expressionistic portrait rather than a straightforward biopic. The cinematography by Robert Richardson is genuinely exceptional, deploying a restless, kaleidoscopic visual style that mirrors Nixon's fractured psyche. The plot is dense and confidently structured across three-plus hours, weaving the public record with psychological speculation. However, the novelty is somewhat constrained by the well-trodden biopic format and comparisons to Stone's own JFK, which pushed formal experimentation further; Nixon operates on familiar Stone territory. The ending, while emotionally resonant in its depiction of Nixon's resignation and coda, doesn't quite achieve the cathartic or revelatory power the film's ambition promises, leaving it slightly muted relative to its scale.