The real life Sean Penn known for wife bashing and aggressive womanising which led to his recent marriage breakdown did not need much acting ability to play this role of real life loser Sam Bicke. Sean Penn has never impressed me and I believe he is almost as over-rated as Australian Actors in the USA. In "Mystic River" we saw a violent little angry man who ends up murdering the wrong man in a very brutal murder.
Here we Penn playing the pathetic Sam Bicke who in real life was a furniture sales man who was intimidated by his boss and thoroughly rejected and divorced by his wife. Bicke struggling not only to survive the American Dream but the universal Western dream in fact this desperation is probably more applicable in Australia which is now the leading materialistic one dimensional country in the post modern world.
Strangely enough Bicke's psychopathology drives him to attempt to assassinate Richard Nixon by stealing a plane and flying it into the White house. Sam Bicke was a Jewish man who tried to emulate his successful brother by setting a business with an African American friend and thus also try to also resurrect his failed marriage.
The film is an overdramatization of the real life drama and the insensitive and hard headed performance by Noami Watts as Sam's wife was to over acted to be any thing like the real wife. It has been said that this for told the 911 incident by three decades but that is totally ridiculous as this type of thing has happened before and had nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. Comparisons to "Falling Down and Taxi Driver" are also really idiotic as those films were very different to each other. None the less the film struggles to exemplify the that part of the human condition commonly referred to as urban solitude and its psychopathology of which it had been the component of thousands of bizarre criminality. It usually makes for compelling viewing and for this reason I would recommend the film. The poor acting let it down.
Here we Penn playing the pathetic Sam Bicke who in real life was a furniture sales man who was intimidated by his boss and thoroughly rejected and divorced by his wife. Bicke struggling not only to survive the American Dream but the universal Western dream in fact this desperation is probably more applicable in Australia which is now the leading materialistic one dimensional country in the post modern world.
Strangely enough Bicke's psychopathology drives him to attempt to assassinate Richard Nixon by stealing a plane and flying it into the White house. Sam Bicke was a Jewish man who tried to emulate his successful brother by setting a business with an African American friend and thus also try to also resurrect his failed marriage.
The film is an overdramatization of the real life drama and the insensitive and hard headed performance by Noami Watts as Sam's wife was to over acted to be any thing like the real wife. It has been said that this for told the 911 incident by three decades but that is totally ridiculous as this type of thing has happened before and had nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. Comparisons to "Falling Down and Taxi Driver" are also really idiotic as those films were very different to each other. None the less the film struggles to exemplify the that part of the human condition commonly referred to as urban solitude and its psychopathology of which it had been the component of thousands of bizarre criminality. It usually makes for compelling viewing and for this reason I would recommend the film. The poor acting let it down.