Secret Honor

The film's major problem is the peformance from Philip Baker Hall. The film is so meditative that Hall's completely manic and over-the-top performance just doesn't work. It's like watching Frank Booth from Blue Velvet play Richard Nixon. This probably would work on stage, but it doesn't translate well to film at all.

I get the criticism of this flick. The score and cinematography makes it feel like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone, and Hall playing Yosemite-Sam-Nixon does wear on you after a while. But if you really pay attention to every ramble on the Bohemian Grove, heroin, Jack Ruby, and the Founding Fathers building the White House in a swamp, you get a deeply disturbing narrative of the American system that transcends fact and history.

Overwrought and I'm just not sure what I am supposed to get out of it.

I think it would've worked much better as a stage play than a film. Philip Baker Hall's portrayal of Nixon just feels so over-the-top in certain points, his physical score could be considered a dance number in certain parts with how much he moves. It just didn't feel like Nixon to me. Still it's interesting speculation on Nixon but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bored by the end of the 90 minute film.

Feels like a smear campaign, kicking a man when he's down. I'm not a Nixon fan, but surely this over-the-top portrayal of him as a bumbling, demented mama's boy is unnecessary. It's a caricature of one of an easy target. Fortunately some substance and complexity does come through, and there are interesting ideas here and there. But it's buried under an awful lot of mean-spirited nastiness. Hall is to be commended for tackling what must have been an extraordinarily difficult performance.

Philip Baker Hall as Nixon rambles half-coherently, occasionally spitting racist slurs, for the entire running time. Nixon was already the most disgraced ex-president in U.S. history, so Secret Honor is nothing but an extremely cheap shot. It's a tedious, grating and thankless viewing experience and it's hard for me to understand why Robert Altman picked the project up.

Cheap shots to be had, but quite a few hit the mark. Most of the bunk is in the end.

Gets better as it goes, a must see for any Philip Baker Hall fan. Also me watching this in 2023: HOW THE HELL IS HENRY KISSINGER STILL ALIVE? Paul Sorvino who played him in "Nixon" and was 20 years younger died and he's still fucking going?!

Very cool performance from Philip Baker Hall. I find it interesting that a one-man show is the exact opposite of what Robert Altman has built his career off of. Yet, it all seems to come naturally to him.

Just what was Altman's intention here? Was it just an exercise in ridicule, or was he aiming for something closer to Greek tragedy? Given his politics and Hall's outsized performance, the former is more likely, but Altman was a sly devil, so it's hard to know for sure. Nonetheless, Hall's portrayal of Nixon as a paranoid and resentful old coot is relentless and brave and deserves the praise often bestowed upon it. The film itself is a bit too one note to praise unreservedly though.

An extraordinary one-man show with superb direction from Robert Altman. Philip Baker Hall IS Nixon!

I know it's not about the impression, but I mean, it's kinda about the impression. Not for a moment did I believe that Hall was this alternate-reality Nixon. Not just his voice, but his mannerisms or stutters or flightiness didn't fit with the persona we all know. It's a great idea for a film, but it's not a great film.

An exceptionally interesting film, done on a shoestring with a rightfully famous, career making turn from Philip Baker Hall. The sustained level of intensity of the performance alone is impressive. My only complaint is that it gets a little wearying after awhile. Quick note: Anyone who complains that this film is unfair to Nixon hasn't listened to the actual Watergate tapes. The real Dick Nixon was a bottomless well of bile and resentment.

A great performance from Philip Baker Hall, and I didn't mind that it was over the top. Now I am too young to have been around when Nixon was President, but from what I know about Nixon, Hall did a great job. Not many films can work decently with one actor and one room, but this Altman film did.

Probably my favorite performance in a film. Phillip Baker Hall is completely captivating in this one-man show. It's over the top in all the best ways, and a perfect project for someone like Robert Altman to adapt.

An American nightmare, an essential and overlooked film.

Watched in tribute to Philip Baker Hall. He’s sensational, a tour-de-force. He doesn’t attempt an impersonation, rather a full-blooded performance as a character by turns petulant, pathetic and frightening. Altman was a political filmmaker, and an eccentric one, but here he lets his actor carry the show, the only attempt to make things cinematic the use of surveillance cameras. What works onstage is not always as powerful onscreen, but as a record of a superb performance this has great value.

It may be nothing more than a caricature - you won't find an actor chewing more scenery this side of Al Pacino in Scarface - but it's a compelling caricature, and an excellent performance by Philip Baker Hall. Some of the ideas are comical - Nixon as mama's boy, on his knees, barking like a dog in particular - but Hall's portrayal of Nixon's megalomania is electrifying. It's impressive how Altman makes essentially a 90-minute monologue so compelling - his restless camera contributes to this.

What makes an unhinged, paranoid, entirely imagined 90-minute political rant a great film instead of the typical offering on Alex Jones' YouTube channel? It's the kernels of truth--that most fragile concession to the humanity of a fictionalized Richard M. Nixon--offered in SECRET HONOR's retelling of his rise and fall through Philip Baker Hall's single tour-de-force monologue. A Greek tragedy that continues to define postwar America.

What a Performance!!!

No.