There's a certain preposterous quality in the thinking of guys like Sam Bicke. A failed salesman and failed family man, his loathing comes to focus on President Richard M. Nixon, whom he intends to get rid of by forcing an airliner to fly into the White House.
The thinking is preposterous because the rest of us -- well, MOST of the rest of us -- can't connect the dots between personal failure and bad luck on the one hand and eliminating a powerful figure on the other.
We can understand a man murdering his wife or the other way around. We can understand murdering an old friend. We usually kill people whose opinions we value, who are in a position to hurt us. But why kill a complete stranger? Richard M. Nixon or John Lennon? The movie tries to explain it for us. Sam Bicke (Sean Penn) is a loser who missed even the caboose of life's gravy train. He failed and Nixon seemed to have all the power and Sam Bicke took out his self loathing on the President. That strikes me as too glib. Why did David Chapman kill John Lennon? In some ways it's better to look at acts like these and treat them as suicides. They've been called Samsonic suicides because they resemble in some ways the suicide of Samson, the guy who killed himself but managed to destroy a temple in the process.
The movie itself is a downer, not because of the talent involved. Sean Penn, as he ages, is beginning to look a little like Harvey Keitel. And he underacts effectively in this role. The supporting players are very good too, though Naomi Watts has very little to do. The pistol that Sam Bicke buys, which he uses to kill his good-natured dog before offing a number of people on the airplane, doesn't resound thunderously. It pops. The perfect sound for the gun of a man who is almost completely impotent. This failed salesman could be the Willy Loman of our day. In fact, the pitiful way in which he tries to ingratiate himself with barely interested people of influence probably owes something to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The self immolation is as powerful today as it was sixty years ago because we all know something of how it feels. Attention must be paid.
A case study of a madman whose rationality is as counterintuitive and as convoluted as that of Mobius strip cubed.
The thinking is preposterous because the rest of us -- well, MOST of the rest of us -- can't connect the dots between personal failure and bad luck on the one hand and eliminating a powerful figure on the other.
We can understand a man murdering his wife or the other way around. We can understand murdering an old friend. We usually kill people whose opinions we value, who are in a position to hurt us. But why kill a complete stranger? Richard M. Nixon or John Lennon? The movie tries to explain it for us. Sam Bicke (Sean Penn) is a loser who missed even the caboose of life's gravy train. He failed and Nixon seemed to have all the power and Sam Bicke took out his self loathing on the President. That strikes me as too glib. Why did David Chapman kill John Lennon? In some ways it's better to look at acts like these and treat them as suicides. They've been called Samsonic suicides because they resemble in some ways the suicide of Samson, the guy who killed himself but managed to destroy a temple in the process.
The movie itself is a downer, not because of the talent involved. Sean Penn, as he ages, is beginning to look a little like Harvey Keitel. And he underacts effectively in this role. The supporting players are very good too, though Naomi Watts has very little to do. The pistol that Sam Bicke buys, which he uses to kill his good-natured dog before offing a number of people on the airplane, doesn't resound thunderously. It pops. The perfect sound for the gun of a man who is almost completely impotent. This failed salesman could be the Willy Loman of our day. In fact, the pitiful way in which he tries to ingratiate himself with barely interested people of influence probably owes something to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The self immolation is as powerful today as it was sixty years ago because we all know something of how it feels. Attention must be paid.
A case study of a madman whose rationality is as counterintuitive and as convoluted as that of Mobius strip cubed.