The Final Days

While almost everyone in the Washington press corps at first thought of the June 17, 1972 break-in at the Watergate hotel/office complex as a "third-rate burglary", reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post took up the story, which would soon rank with the JFK assassination, Vietnam, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks as one of the most heartbreaking events in American history. Their discoveries of all the nasty goings-on in the administration of Richard Nixon during the 1972 presidential campaign led to the Watergate scandal, which was detailed in their memorable book "All The President's Men", and the classic 1976 film of the same name with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford that came soon after. Their follow-up book "The Final Days" took up their precise reporting with an in-depth look at the things that caused Nixon to lose his grip on power. That book became the basis of a superb made-for-TV political drama that aired on ABC-TV on October 29, 1989.

THE FINAL DAYS is a hard-hitting look inside both the administration and the very mind of Richard Nixon himself, portrayed by Lane Smith with equal amounts of sympathy and paranoia. Given this tendency by those on the Right to paint him as a victim and those on the Left to paint him as a monster, Smith wisely takes the middle ground in his portrayal of the 37th president, never falling to a caricature, a pitfall that is so easy to fall into. Through Richard Pearce's direction and Hugh Whitemore's screen adaptation of the Bernstein/Woodward book, we are privy to many of the familiar elements we have all read about and seen: the catastrophic knowledge that Nixon had all of his White House conversations taped; his flight to keep those tapes private; and the unconscionable paranoia that had festered inside of him since the Communist witch hunt of the early 1950s that led to his own destruction. As was the case with ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, the fact that we know the eventual outcome of the proceedings hardly makes THE FINAL DAYS a merely good but predictable docudrama. What makes it a superb docudrama is in finding out how we go to that bleak conclusion of Nixon being forced to resign from office in August 1974 under the threat of impeachment by Congress, and conviction and removal by the Senate. Surrounding Smith's accurate performance of Nixon are such distinguished actors as Theodore Bikel (as Henry Kissinger), Susan Brown (as Pat Nixon), Richard Kiley (as Nixon's lawyer J. Fred Buzhardt), Gary Sinise (as Watergate investigator Richard Ben-Veniste), David Ogden Stiers (as Alexander Haig) and James B. Sikking (as Attorney General Elliot Richardson).

Unsurprisingly, given that the Watergate scandal was still as much an open wound on the American psyche as Vietnam, THE FINAL DAYS, when it first aired, was greeted with considerable outrage from the usual places on the Far Right. The real Richard Nixon, even with less than four and a half years left to live, was as livid about THE FINAL DAYS as he and his most rabid supporters had been about ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (which, after all, had been released a mere twenty months after his resignation). But the truth of the matter is that Nixon's actions as president in engaging in political sabotage, wiretapping, eavesdropping, conjuring up an Enemies List, and so forth, continue to have devastating consequences for the United States as a nation in general, and for our system of government in particular. His abuses of the powers of the office of the President, a product of long-standing anti-Commie paranoia and a win-at-all-costs, slash-and-burn mentality towards politics and his opponents, destroyed his own legacy; and all those qualities are ably embodied by Smith's performance here, as they would be by Sir Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone's later 1995 political bio-pic NIXON.

Though it can be said that seeing THE FINAL DAYS, like both NIXON and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, is like seeing political suicide being re-enacted for the entire world to relive, what we are really watching is the stark difference between how we idealize ourselves and what it sometimes is in actuality, which is not always a pretty picture. Such a stark picture, in the end, is the legacy of THE FINAL DAYS; for like ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, it is not only about a political scandal, it is also about those dark corners inside the American Dream. It is also not only about the downfall of Richard Nixon, but arguably a portent of things to come in the age of Donald Trump as well, which itself, has proven to be incredibly catastrophic.

With the impeachment of a president very much on the horizon as I write this, it was interesting to go back to the Nixon presidency with this movie. Many years ago I read the book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It recounted, as you would guess from the title, the last, pathetic days of the Nixon presidency - and it did so in great detail. The movie, as you might expect, is less detailed than the book. It tends to move the story forward quickly through the use of short narrations offered by various characters and highlights only certain incidents, but it still offers a compelling portrait of Nixon, his family and his officials in the White House as they desperately seek ways to avoid the inevitable ending to the administration.

Lane Smith was superb in the role of Nixon and without doubt was the highlight of the movie. To me (and, admittedly I was only 11 when Nixon resigned, so my "memories" of him are largely from historical news footage) he really did become Nixon. The portrayal was eerie and fascinating - and even sympathetic. Yes, I started to feel sorry for Nixon as I watched this. He was such a complex man, and he had a sense of sadness looming over him - he was paranoid and isolated and introverted, and yet at the same time he was drawn to public life and had a seemingly desperate need to be liked and admired; to be popular. And yet in spite of being perhaps the most visible person in the world, he seems to have spent so much of his life and even his presidency alone. The impression I got from this movie (not an unfair impression from what I've learned about the man over the years) was that his only real confidante - the person to whom he was closest and who was most desperately loyal to him - was his daughter Julie. Otherwise, he kept even those closest to him (including his wife Pat and daughter Tricia) at a distance. Nixon comes across as a tragic figure in this, and at times, with its focus on Nixon's personality and with Watergate closing in on him, this movie is actually very heavy. I appreciated (about halfway through) the truly funny scenes between Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, as the Soviet leader takes Nixon on a hair-raising car ride with a Lincoln Continental the U.S. president had gifted him with. That lightened things up a bit.

It was interesting watching Nixon's White House officials (especially Chief of Staff Alexander Haig, who was admirable portrayed by David Ogden Stiers) try to hold things together just to keep the government functioning with some sort of cohesion, and Nixon's lawyers are shown becoming increasingly frustrated as the impossibility of their task of defending him becomes increasingly clear. Viewers should be aware that this is really a study of Nixon the man rather than the Watergate scandal. There's actually very little about Watergate itself - just about the aftermath and the desperate attempts to find some way to get Nixon off the hook for his actions and decisions. For those with an interest in Nixon as a man and in the end of his presidency, this is a movie that should be watched. (7/10)

Lane Smith who played Perry White on the Superman TV series is positively riviting as Nixon. He has Dickie's mannerisms down pat and is even better than Anthony Hopkins was in Stone's "NIXON". This is a great follow-up to All The President's Men and shows how it all fell apart around Dick at the end. The scene of Nixon & The Russian Premier in the Lincoln Continental at Camp David is priceless.

This is an excellent drama based on the fall of Richard Nixon. Other than a bit of condensation of some of the events and characters this is a remarkably faithful retelling of the Watergate melt-down. All of the actors are well cast as characters from our recent history but Lane Smith as Nixon deserves special praise. Physically he is far more convincing than Anthony Hopkins in NIXON and, like the British actor, he really gets into his character's complicated psyche. Smith manages all the physical tics and vocal infections we recognize as Nixon but never veers into caricature. Without excusing Nixon's crimes or motivations he succeeds in creating a sympathetic portrait. There's even some welcome comic relief when the jittery president is victimized by a joy-riding Brezhnev at Camp David. This is an excellent historical drama without the Oliver Stone hokum.

Just want to state early on that this film is indeed low-cost and the production quality reflects it. Except that point, this is one of the best political films ever produced. I have been interested and studied about Mr. Richard M. Nixon, his administration, and the Watergate affairs quite thoroughly. I can judge this film to be one of the most accurate, impartial, and humanly dramatized films out there. What it is done right in the first place is to approach the story and all of the characters with compassion. There is no Republicans, Democrats, Nixon lovers, or Nixon haters when it comes to a human tragedy. This is indeed a tragedy of power and people who are enslaved by it. Richard Nixon in this film has been portrayed not as good or bad, but as a humanly flawed and indeed tragic character. In "Nixon" and "Frost/Nixon" of later years and productions, we had to be dragged back into Mr. Nixon's younger years, so we could appreciate his agonizing thirst for power and success and to understand his subsequent behavior. This film does not need to do that. Just by showing the "real-time" Nixon in scene after scene, we can relate to his pains and agony of losing power. How he most desperately wooed people towards him in order to gain their support, respect, liking, or even love is almost unbearable to watch. I for one dread Mr. Nixon's negative impact to the world around him, and yet deeply sympathize this man to the core. Lane Smith became President Richard M. Nixon without any disbelief. He must have understood his character most deeply, otherwise such a performance could never have been conceived. Other characters of Alexander Haig, J. Fred Buzhardt, Leonard Garment, Pat Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, Archibald Cox, John Sirica, etc. never physically resembled whom they played, but we subscribed to all of them because of their flawless performances. Richard Pearce's direction is also without a missed fire. Too bad it is low-cost and meant only for television consumption, otherwise "The Final Days" would have been lauded as the gold standard of the Nixon films that came and will come.