Nixon - Collector's Edition | 
| Actors: Joan Allen, Brian Bedford, Powers Boothe, Tom Bower, Kevin Dunn
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.99
Buy New: $7.18
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Rating:  119 reviews
Sales Rank: 16569
Format: Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Dvd, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Russian (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Number Of Discs: 2
Running Time: 192 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.9
MPN: 786936166750
ISBN: 0788832034
UPC: 786936166750
EAN: 9780788832031
ASIN: B000063V8K
Theatrical Release Date: December 20, 1995
Release Date: March 12, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com essential video
Oliver Stone's controversial drama about the Nixon years in the White House stars Anthony Hopkins in a genuinely great performance as the scandal-plagued president. The film attempts to wed suggestions of Nixon's formative experiences as a boy to his political connections with shady movers and shakers and finally to his self-destructive tenure in the Oval Office. The Watergate scandal is revisited rather impressionistically--it may be hard for viewers who weren't alive then to get a sense of what the crisis was about. The parade of stars playing figures in Nixon's orbit--J.T. Walsh as John Ehrlichman, James Woods as Bob Haldeman, David Hyde Pierce as John Dean, etc.--is fun if a tad distracting. Joan Allen got a well-deserved Oscar nomination as First Lady Pat Nixon, and Hopkins got one as well. --Tom Keogh
Product Description
A dramatization of Richard Nixon's involvement in the Watergate conspiracy resulting in his resignation from the presidency. Includes an interview with Oliver Stone & footage cut from the film.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 10-JAN-2006
Media Type: DVD
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| Customer Reviews: Read 114 more reviews...
Enlightening but Chaotic June 26, 2009
Thomas M. STASKO (Cumberland, MD USA)
The first hour of this film, after a brief introduction to set the basis of the storyline for the viewer, is a flashback that displays the depth of the subject of this film. The rapid fire nature of the topics that are dealt with forces the viewer to piece together events on the fly, which I am sure was the case during these troubling times.
The approach that Mr. Stone takes to this story telling should be considered an artistic interpretation of what these times really were. The character development of Nixon shows a possible loss of contact with reality.
In a subplot, this film also deals briefly with a familiar subject for Mr. Stone, the Vietnam War.
 Probably Stone's best political drama, In a great Blu-Ray edition June 6, 2009
Matthew T. Weflen (Chicago, IL)
The Film:
Let me say right now by way of disclosure: I love Oliver Stone films. I don't think he's the "conspiracy nut" he's often painted as. I do think he is a biased historian. He has an ideological axe to grind, especially insofar as American politics are concerned. But it's easy enough to detect and set aside (if you want to), and nonetheless he is a stunningly talented filmmaker.
"Nixon" presents probably the best of Stone's "presidential" films (JFK, Nixon, W.). It contains a spectacular performance by its principal character (Anthony Hopkins), and a great set of supporting players, as per usual in Stone's films (particular standouts include Bob Hoskins as J. Edgar Hoover, James Woods as Bob Haldeman, Paul Sorvino as Henry Kissinger, and Joan Allen as Pat Nixon). Hopkins does something amazing - without directly aping every little thing about Nixon, he portrays the inner Nixon so well that he ends up replacing the original in the mind of the viewer, to the point that when at the end Stone shows us the real Nixon's farewell helicopter ride, it is phenomenally bizarre to see someone else as Nixon.
Stone weaves a story of Nixon as a sympathetic, troubled, perennially downtrodden little guy who claws his way into power through tenacity, dirty tricks, perseverance, and canny manipulation of current events. Nixon is a man who has the highest aspirations of power, and is brought to the lowest possible point through his own frailties, paranoia, and personal demons. Stone at once makes him sympathetic and demonic.
I think Stone is a humanist, and a person who is seeking the truth. His humanism puts him at odds with those who would use mass populations as pawns and destroy vast populations for policy objectives - but it also drives him to seek what is human in these sorts of manipulators. He seeks to tell the truth - the human truth - of the events and the times he focuses on. He uses different kinds of footage, and compresses times and conversations, creating montages, almost collages, of images and words that evoke the spirit of a time.
"Nixon" may well be Stone at his best in this art of collage film-making. It is utterly absorbing, despite its 3.5 hour heft, to anyone who enjoys deep character drama, and of course any political history aficionado.
The Blu-Ray:
At its best, this HD transfer presents images of amazing detail. Certain scenes show incredible facial detail, with pores, whiskers, fine lines, and the like shown in pristine clarity. But, as with many Stone film, detail is often obscured by intentional choices on his part - so many types of video sources are used, from 35mm to 8mm, TV broadcasts, all kinds of material with all different levels of inherent detail. This Blu-Ray displays them all probably as well as they'll ever be displayed. Whatever grain is inherent in the source image is always faithfully presented, never scrubbed away by excessive DNR. So, no, this is not a transfer you'll want to choose to really blow away a viewer with "HD" quality (try Stone's "Alexander" for that). But it's faithful, and as the film works on you for its 3.5 hours, I think most viewers will appreciate it.
Audio is an uncompressed Dolby Digital 5.1ch mix. It does a fine job presenting the sometimes booming soundscape Stone employs with all of his complex cuts from dialogue scenes to documentary shots and pictures of war. Dialogue is never drowned out, and John Williams' score comes through very nicely.
Stone has recorded two commentaries for the film, one dealing with the movie-making end of things, one dealing with the political backdrop of the age. Both are entertaining, as per usual with Stone commentaries. Sometimes there are gaps (heh heh), but when he is speaking he is always lucid and informative.
The second disc has a wealth of extras. 58 minutes of deleted scenes (more like 30, when you cut out Stone's explanations and the contextual bits of the actual film) are presented in 480p. Most of them have been reintegrated into the director's cut on the main disc however. So this is more interesting for Stone's intro than anything else. A 35-minute HD documentary by Sean Stone is the new item here, collecting many big-wigs discussing the pros and cons of the film. An hour-long Charlie Rose interview with Stone presents a deep and occasionally tense conversation between a master interviewer and a master filmmaker. Overall, it's a pretty good slate of extras.
**********
If you're a fan of Stone and you have a Blu-Ray player, you need this disc, pure and simple. It's an essential part of any Oliver Stone collection.
Fans of biopics should give this a hard look, too. This may not be a movie for those who dig Vin Diesel movies (not that there's anything wrong with that).
For my part, it's something I watch every year or two. It rewards multiple viewings in the way that dense Oliver Stone films can. With this Blu-Ray edition, I now have the best possible video quality and a great set of extras.
One of oliver stones best movies March 13, 2009
O. A. Martinez (Miami, Fl)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This movie was insightful and blended in enough real-life material with excellent acting from anthony hopkins!
Stone & Hopkins Deliver!!! March 11, 2009
T. Bandele (Newark, NJ.)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've watched this movie at least a dozen times, and each time i get something different from it. Every single actor, from Joan Allen to Ed Harris, gives an amazing performance. Even Sam Waterston (whose part was deleted from the lengthy film but is included in disc two) delivers an amazingly convincing performance. I highly recommend this movie.
Now Get Up.
A PLEASANT SURPRISE February 7, 2009
Steven Travers (CALIFORNIA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
He infers that the beast is embodied in the Central Intelligence Agency, which in turn controls the U.S. A sequence showing Nixon visiting CIA Director Richard Helms (Sam Waterston) was mostly cut out of the original film, but the video shows it in its entirety at the end of the movie. Helms and his agency are virtually said to be the devil. Flowers in Helms' office are shown to bloom and wilt in supernatural ways, presumably depending on Helms' evil whim. Waterston's eyes are shown to be coal black. He is Satan!
Nixon asks himself the rhetorical question, "Whose helping us?" while staring into a fireplace flame under a portrait of Kennedy. The theme is first brought forth in Nixon's college years, when his older brother dies, and apparently this frees up money through an unexplained source (an insurance policy?) that allows Nixon to go to law school. In light of two Kennedy assassinations, the answer to Nixon's question seems to be the same one that Mick Jagger gives in "Sympathy for the Devil".
"After all, it was you and me," Jagger sings, and Stone would have you believe it was the devil in silent concert with Nixon and his brand of...something. Jingoism, patriotism, xenophobia, bloodthirstiness? Nixon is seen on a couple of occasions shadowed by a devil-like winged creature (the beast), and his conversation with a female college student at the Lincoln Memorial ends with her identification of the beast as the controlling force in American politics. Presumably the girl is able to see this clearly because her heart is pure.
Stone invents secret cabals that never happened between Nixon and John Birch Texas businessmen, racist to the core, who along with a smirking Cuban are there to tell us that because Nixon was in Texas on November 22, 1963 he was somehow plotting JFK's murder.
The conspiracy link between "JFK" and "Nixon" exists in this reference, and the CIA "tracks" like the one Agent X talks about in "JFK", apparently tie Guatemala, Iran and the Bay of Pigs to subsequent events. The Bay of Pigs tie-in, led by E. Howard Hunt and his Cubans, Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, et al, is real enough, but the assassination is one Stone insists is part of the same "track." Something on the list of "horribles," which Nixon discusses with H.R. Haldeman (James Woods), who then talks about "bodies," references to something I still have never figured out after watching the film 15 times. The Kennedy's bodies? Vietnam dead bodies?
Stone gives Watergate its due, but lets the actual events speak for themselves without embellishing it with more hate towards Nixon than that era produced of its own accord. He actually does a solid job of demonstrating the semi-legitimate reasons for creating the Plumbers in the first place, which was to plug leaks in light of Daniel Ellsberg's treacherous "Pentagon Papers" revelation, in concert with the bunker mentality caused by anti-war protesters threatening, in their mind at the time, a civil war like the one that forced Lincoln to declare martial law.
Stone also makes it clear that Nixon and his people were convinced that Kennedy stole the 1960 election, and he does not try to deny it (without advocating it, either). Murray Chotiner represents the realpolitik Republicans who, Stone wants us to know, pulled the same fraudulent tricks, when he says, "They stole it fair and square."
Nixon is depicted as foul-mouthed and quite the drinker. His salty language apparently was learned well into adulthood, and he did occasionally imbibe after years as a teetotaler, but his associates insist it was by no means a regular thing. Woods' Haldeman is no friend of the Hebrews, and Paul Sorvino, doing a big league Henry Kissinger, finds himself constantly at war with the inside Nixon team, put down for his Jewishness. Powers Boothe is a cold-blooded Alexander Haig, representing the reality of Watergate's final conclusion.
It never would have happened under J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon says, and Haig agrees that Hoover, who died just before Watergate, was a "realist" who would have kept it locked up. Nixon discusses suicide with Haig, who eases him out of that but never really tells him not to. When Nixon asks for any final suggestion, Haig says something the real man probably never said:
"You have the Army. Lincoln used it."
Sure.
Nixon breaks down, incredulous that for all his accomplishments, he can be brought down by such a nothing event. Stone allows Hopkins to infuse this scene with Shakespearean irony. Stone gives Nixon his due in many ways. He demonstrates that he was utterly faithful to his wife, Pat, turning down a right wing lovely served up by the Birchers, while telling the girl that he entered politics to help people. His hardscrabble youth is nicely portrayed, with Mary Steenburgen playing his long-suffering Quaker mother. Young Nixon is utterly faithful to her and the honest, religious ethic of the family. But in a later scene, Steenburgen looks questioningly at his Presidential aspirations, saying he is destined to lead, but only if God is on his side. It is a telling statement playing to his theme that dark forces are the wind at Nixon's sails. He enters politics as an idealist, and becomes something else because he discovers he has the talent for it. He is industrious, in contrast to the Kennedys, and will earn everything he has simply by out-working everybody.
An entirely loving portrait of Dick Nixon would have no credibility. Stone does a great job with the movie, which is as balanced as it could be with a side of liberal righteousness.(...)
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