Change Your Image
dgolland
Reviews
The Final Days (1989)
Criminally Sympathetic
Aside from poor production values and stilted writing (don't watch it right after watching any episode of The West Wing), the main problem with this film is that it paints our most criminal president as a sympathetic victim of a press Witch Hunt. It takes at face value--and leaves largely unchallenged--Nixon's statements about himself and the Watergate investigation, positing the thesis that all presidents misbehave in office and cover it up, most worse than him. Not so. Whatever Kennedy's and Clinton's picadillos, whatever fault might be attributed to FDR's hiding of his disability, Nixon used his office for personal gain, broke multiple campaign finance laws, and engaged in a conspiracy to cover up his staff's domestic spying, in particular their spying at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. He did the opposite of what his oath required: he did not support, protect, and defend the Constitution; rather, he subverted it, and this film, by portraying him as it does, would help him get away with it. Don't be fooled.