The Assassination of Richard Nixon

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) is a biographical thriller you can watch online on iFILM, with Sean Penn as Sam Bicke — a real man who, in early 1974, planned to hijack a commercial jet and crash it into the White House.

The film doesn't start with the plan. It starts earlier, with smaller losses accumulating. His wife takes the kids and files for separation. His boss at the furniture store catches him fudging a sale and lets him go. His brother won't co-sign a loan. The bank won't either. Don Cheadle plays his only real friend, a mechanic who sees where this is heading and quietly steps back. Director Niels Mueller keeps the frame tight and the pacing deliberately slow — this is less a thriller about an assassination attempt and more a portrait of a man who has decided the world's dishonesty is the only explanation for his own failures.

Penn threads something genuinely difficult here: Bicke reads as pitiable and frightening at almost the same moment. Naomi Watts appears briefly as his estranged wife, and the script draws on Bicke's own recorded tapes, which he sent to Leonard Bernstein. Stream The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) online on iFILM.