Meticulously depicts the disintegration of Samuel Bicke (Sean Penn), a failed salesman and ineffectual would-be assassin. Unwillingly separated from his beautiful wife, Marie (Naomi Watts), Samuel is a meek and earnest everyman who grows increasingly embittered as mounting disappointment and rejection dash his dreams one by one. On the brink of a nervous collapse, he yearns for the success he sees in others, unable to understand why it cannot also be his. Inspired by real-life events, The Assassination of Richard Nixon tells the story of Samuel’s breakdown and his subsequent attempt to assassinate the president – an endeavour which, like everything in his life, is inevitably doomed to failure. With the noise of Watergate providing a constant blaring background to the dissolution of his marriage and the loss of his job, Bicke loses his tenuous grip on reality. His desire to lash out at the government for his personal anguish drives him to conceal a gun under an orthopaedic leg brace. His intention: to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House.