Impeached from my DVD player.

Secret Honor. Suspension of disbelief is instantaneously destroyed with the pre-credits disclaimer that this quasi-realistic film has, for the purposes of storytelling, made things up. Occasionally, I expect things to be made up. But I'd prefer to believe that they're real. Especially when they're about real people. Fortunately, if you missed this warning the job will be swiftly accomplished by the actor's poor likeness to Richard Nixon. And his British accent. Actually, he doesn't have a British accent. But he looks British, anyway.

Before the film was prematurely ejected, there were a few things worth noting. It is possible to infer that Richard Nixon, following his disgraced presidency, locked himself away in a house with security cameras, a loaded revolver, and a decanter of brandy.

He also had a tape recorder and microphone. Had we continued watching more than about three minutes past the credit squence, I'm sure that these would have been used as a device with which to normalize Nixon's talking to himself. After all, he's the only character and you might stand to wonder how on God's good earth he'd be able to fill all that time alone.

I do feel slightly ashamed to have given up on this so soon. After all, it's a Robert Altman film. It's about history. And I like history. But the truth of the matter is that if I can't have the product of Aaron Sorkin's drug-addled mind, I'd rather not have representative democracy at all. At least not fictionalized representative democracy.

In high school, teachers used to say on the first day, "As of now, everyone has an 'A.'" While 'Secret Honor' may be subject to that same standard, it rapidly begins to fail. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and suggest that it may be a allegory for it's subject's presidency.