Secret Honor

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Alec B The screenplay is undeniably compelling and Philip Baker Hall's performance is wonderfully manic. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 10/13/23 Full Review Shioka O This is miserable, funny and imaginative work. The performance is compelling throughout. True one-man show. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 12/07/22 Full Review William L It's deeply disturbing that the world has lost beloved character actor Philip Baker Hall, who played a collapsing Nixon in this one-man tirade and lived another 38 years beyond it, while Henry Kissinger still continues to dole out his geopolitical expertise like a poisonous sludge dumped as runoff from a factory into a dead marsh. Secret Honor is a historical fantasy intended to explore the bizarre personality traits that peeked out from behind Nixon's deceptively wholesome and traditional forward-facing image, which became increasingly prominent with time (rather than to serve as a retrospective of the literal happenings of his political career). From that perspective, Hall gives some fantastic mood swings and idiosyncracies, he feels like an individual with a temper, an inferiority complex, and a series of issues. However, the material just doesn't seem to work that well for me, it's mostly a series of tirades against political opponents interlaced with a few childhood memories and a surprising number of Oedipus-esque episodes of Nixon longing for his mother. The film can never shake the stylings of its one-man play origins, and while Hall's enthusiasm and well-timed energy go a long way to elevating the final product (along with a heaping helping of expletives and quotable lines), ultimately the lack of variety is noticeable. I wanted to like it more than I ultimately did. But seriously, the best part of Secret Honor is hearing Hall go off against a portrait of Kissinger. It's comprehensive and vulgar enough that it couldn't be typed out here, but it's a tonic for the soul. (2.5/5) Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 06/18/22 Full Review Audience Member Robert Altman's vitriolic account of one of the US's most underestimated Presidents isn't the most visually compelling I've seen, but if you're sucked in you'll realize that the film's worth is found in its powerful screenplay. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member A movie about a guy, who just happened to be president, whose nickname was dick. After the events in this movie, it took on a more pejorative meaning, not just tricky dick, too. I don't know about the script but Philip Baker Hall does the best nixon I have seen. And that's all there is: nixon, nothing but nixon. About the script: I haven't heard the watergate tapes in their entirety, and I wasn't aware nixon used so many f-bombs. So be warned, because nixon drops more f-bombs than bombs he dropped on vietnam; it's a virtual reality of a rolling thunder of f-bombs, that's what you'll get here. The thing that strikes me as funny about the events of watergate now, is that while nixon and friends were persecuted for breaking into the watergate, and very rightly so, their use of wiretaps and recording everything and the way congress embraced it, paved the way for today's 1984ish society. The movie might seem like a very one sided and maybe even inaccurate depiction of a US president, but hey, that guy didn't earn the moniker tricky dick for nothing. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Audience Member http://filmreviewsnsuch.blogspot.com/2015/06/secret-honor.html Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/25/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Secret Honor

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