Many Find ‘Nixon’ the Movie and...

Sharon Smith tried to explain the dark complexity at the center of “Nixon” to her daughter, Angela, but all the Irvine 13-year-old could think of was how creepy it seemed.

“He looked weird,” Angela said, referring to Anthony Hopkins in the title role shortly after a recent screening at the Edwards South Coast Plaza theater in Costa Mesa. “And he acted weird too. Was he really a president?”

Sharon Smith patiently pointed out that Hopkins’ clenched performance tried to show the human side of Nixon, a flawed man who for a few long years was the most powerful figure in the world. Then he ran into that trouble with Watergate. Then he sank lower than any president in our history.

Angela nodded but had to interrupt. “If he was that way, then why was he president in the first place?”

The question made her mother pause. “We’ll talk more about that later,” she replied, then told a reporter: “I brought her so she would think about things like that.”

Though aware of the movie’s R rating, Smith felt it was important that her daughter see it. Smith said she doubted whether Angela’s teachers told her much about the Nixon years and hoped this would be a first step toward learning about the Vietnam War and other important events of the time.

Angela liked that idea but wasn’t so generous with the movie. She thought it was boring and hard to follow. Way too much talking and not enough action. She also wasn’t clear as to exactly why Nixon had to resign in 1974.

“I guess it was because he did something wrong with all those other guys,” Angela said, referring to H. R. Haldeman, John Erlichman, John Dean and the rest of the president’s men who took part in the Watergate scandal.

John Peralta and Simon Latham didn’t look much older than Angela, but they attended the screening without parents. Peralta, who said he was 17 but could have been mistaken for a few years younger, was mystified by what Stone and Hopkins were trying to convey.

“Was [Nixon] a loser or a good guy?” Peralta, who lives in Santa Ana, wanted to know. “He did some good things but then he broke the law, right?”

Latham, 18 and also from Santa Ana, was likewise confused by what he was supposed to feel for Nixon, who is portrayed as a tragic but unbalanced man throughout most of the movie.

More accustomed to straightforward characters offered as either heroes or villains in his favorite action flicks, Latham said the movie was burdened by contradictions. He did think Nixon was “wonderful” when he came out of retirement to win the presidency in 1968, but “really sick” when his administration collapsed six years later.

“I guess you can be good and bad at the same time,” Latham concluded.

At the Edwards Westminster 10, Jamie Rucker of Huntington Beach didn’t worry much about Nixon’s character or the film’s moral implications. He and his girlfriend, Lisa DiNapio, also of Huntington Beach, spontaneously took in the film after growing tired of Christmas shopping. “Nixon” tired them out too.

“It was way too long,” said Rucker, 18. “There was also a lot of stuff that repeated itself. The [Watergate] stuff kept on going around and around.”

DiNapio, 17, didn’t think much of Hopkins’ performance, which she described as “a little demented.”

“I’ve seen [news footage and photos] of [Nixon], and he didn’t seem like that,” she said. “I don’t think it was very realistic, at least with how they showed him.”