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Reviews
The Final Days (1989)
Whitewash
This film purports to be an honest and fair-minded portrayal of Nixon. In much of the film, this is true. And there is nothing to fault the acting and direction. It's hard to watch in places because the scenes leading up to Nixon's departure are stomach churning -- especially in his maudlin and self-serving farewell address.
What ruins the film, however, is that it attempts to leave you with doubt about Nixon's guilt that is contradicted by the evidence shown in the rest of the film. His terror that the tapes would be reviewed for evidence, along with the mysterious "gaps" in some parts, suggest Nixon knew well what they contained. But we're apparently supposed to accept that Nixon didn't exactly remember his part in the cover-up until he had listened obsessively to the most damning of the tapes. This really strains credulity.
It seems more likely that Nixon not only remembered with great clarity his part in the obstruction of justice but that he was probably the one who ordered the break-in in the first place -- just as he had tried to do with the Brookings Institution.