i skipped drinking liberally last night because i got free tickets to an advance screening of the assassination of richard nixon through my membership in the philadelphia film society (and thanks to my mother-in-law for my PFS membership)
the film is based on true events, raising the immediate question of how that could be, given that nixon was not assassinated. the title is a little misleading. the film is more about an assassination attempt, or maybe not even that. in law school we used to debate how far along the continuum from thinking about killing someone to actually pulling the trigger does it become the crime of attempted murder. in the film sam bicke's plan to fly a DC-9 into the white house literally never got off the ground. indeed, i think when it happened no one even realized a crazed shooter at BWI airport was, in fact, a potential presidential assassin. it wasn't until the rambling tapes he recorded about his plans reached leonard bernstein through the mail several says later that anyone had any idea.
aside from those tapes, and the bits of her personal life pieced together afterwards, i imagine not much is known about why bicke tried to kill the president in such a spectacular fashion. but this extremely well-acted film portrays a clearly mentally ill would-be assassin in a fairly (though not completely) sympathetic light is a really great attempt to fill in the gaps. it can be sad to watch, however, as it is evident to the viewer that virtually everything bicke tries to do in his personal and professional life is doomed to failure. and that's not even counting his final acts that give the film its name. but the film is so well done and well acted, it's well worth seeing.
by the way, the film makes no attempt to refer to the september 11th attacks even though bicke's method draws an obvious parallel. however, it does cast a bit of doubt on the contention that, prior to september 11, 2005, "No one could have imagined... using planes as a missile.".
UPDATE: john wrote about bicke (or byck) last march, making essentially the same point as i do in the above paragraph. there's nothing new under the sun.
