Pluskylang Great Film overall

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

SnoopyStyle Former President Richard Milhous Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) is alone in his study talking into a tape recorder. He has his closed-circuit TV setup, his drinks and a gun. He talks to and about the portraits on the walls. His rants are rambling as he reflects on his life and what has happened to it.I'm not a fan of one-person plays that get transferred to the big screen. It starts from a deficit where it doesn't have the danger and the immediacy of a live show no matter who's doing it. The other problem is that this is a fictional account. It tells the audience right away that this is all fake. It's like an alternate universe and it's hard to say how much truth can be gleamed from this movie. Robert Altman can't do much more than point and shoot in this film. PBH is a great actor and I have great praises for his work. It's an interesting film to see him act but it's not much more than that. I rather have a well researched documentary about Nixon.

Ajtlawyer An adaptation of a stage play, "Secret Honor" is the tour de force performance of actor Philip Baker Hall. At the time he made it he'd had a distinguished stage career in New York but was barely known in movies and television. While he doesn't look or sound very much like Nixon he totally inhabits the character and rages around the set swilling Scotch and experiencing nearly every emotion you can think of.The story is of course totally fictional but in some respects Hall and the writers may have gotten closer to the core of who Nixon was than any other film ever did. Nixon is without a doubt the most enigmatic man ever to be President and "Secret Honor" is a fascinating study revealing what made the man tick.Even if you don't care for Nixon or political movies, this movie is worth watching for Hall's performance alone. There's never a moment in the movie, in which he's on screen every second, where he doesn't completely rivet the viewer's attention. The movie didn't make Hall a star but it started getting his name out. A young P.T. Anderson was a huge fan of the movie and later struck up a relationship with Hall which led to Hall appearing in a lot of Anderson's movies such as "Magnolia" and "Boogie Nights".

A777Writer777 I love many Altman films, but was disappointed by "Secret Honor." Described as a work of "fiction" that uses Nixon as a "character," it still depends heavily on actual facts from Nixon's life to succeed and there is the constant danger of blurring fact and fiction. It's a claustrophobic experience in that it's basically a one-man show put on film, despite the introduction of some elements such as video monitors on the set to make the production slightly more cinematic.I attended a presentation of the film after which the director made some comments. Seeing Altman in person was fascinating. His dedication to developing and completing the project was impressive. He said that he had chosen not to open up the play and that he'd mount the production in the same way today. I disagree with his choice, as did the woman who posed the question, but they both were gracious, which is something to see these days. I also think the play on which the film is based is overwritten. Some people in the audience seemed to be under the impression that merely because a film has a lot of dialogue it instantly qualifies as art. If a film has only one character and is pure monologue, the speeches must be brilliant throughout. That was not the case here. Even as a work of "imagination" the film didn't ring true to me. Would a lawyer really say to himself that if he had actually gone to jail for Watergate, at least he would have been free after the experience? Lawyers know that's not true: Having served your time doesn't extinguish the public record; and Nixon was, by many accounts, a brilliant lawyer and a brilliant man, but there's the tragedy.Even little details at the start played false. Nixon is seen as a bumbler who can't even insert a blank tape into his tape recorder. From what I understand, he was pretty anal compulsive, so as a bit of character definition, that business made no sense. I also didn't understand what he was doing wearing a velvet dressing gown if he was working in his office in a law firm. Other small details are dated: Alger Hiss did in fact spy for the Soviets, whether or not Nixon was out to get him as was suggested at the perjury trial.Still, the portrait of Nixon was a far more complex and generous one than might have been expected for 1984. As an offering in this highly charged political season, "Secret Honor" is worth seeing. P.B. Hall's performance is very strong, although I kept saying to myself throughout, that's the man from "Magnolia." For me, the best section was when Fictional Nixon took himself to task for destroying Helen Gahagan Douglas's political career by suggesting she was a communist when she ran against him from California for a U.S. Senate seat. There seemed to be a deep undercurrent of affection. But am I the only one who thought the piece also was suggesting that Nixon may have been latently gay?"Secret Honor" is not one of Altman's best. For Nixon mythology in cinema, my favorite is still Oliver Stone's "Nixon."

Quimper The best film ever made on Nixon, or any president. A film which is an entire monologue by Philip Baker Hall, one of the best character actors of our time. While, like Anthony Hopkins, he doesn't LOOK like Nixon, his performance helps you look beyond it. As he staggers around the oval office, cursing his enemies and talking to ghosts, staring into his monitors, you get the resonance of the real Nixon, and you even begin to feel sorry for him. It opens the myth of Nixon wide to reveal a man beneath the icon, and is a simultaneously thrilling and dramatic film. Altman's film has been out of print for at least a decade, but it far surpasses Oliver Stone's film and is worth watching for anyone who ever wanted to appreciate Nixon as anything other than a monster.