Watch The Day Reagan Was Shot For Free

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This one really has me confused. Almost every IMDb comment here - likes and dislikes - is based on people's political beliefs, or on their arguments about what is historically accurate, or how they perceive the Hollywood Left in general and Oliver Stone in particular. But, folks, this is a movie made for TV and all reviews should be based on its relevance or lack of same as a work of art. A TV movie a work of art? Okay, maybe not, but all films, plays, musicals, operas, etc. aspire to at least encompass the artistic impulse, and veracity is hardly even a consideration in such things. Only excellence is. We now know that Richard III wasn't the demented murderer Shakespeare painted him as, and that Boris Godunov did not murder his way to the Russian throne. But those facts in no way diminish Shakespeare's RICHARD III as one of the greatest plays ever written, or Mussorgsky's BORIS GODUNOV as the greatest of all Russian operas. So, let's let verisimilitude lie dormant for a minute and simply look at this TV movie as a minor work of art.I'd never heard of this film before, and watching it 16 years after it was made, I found myself absolutely mesmerized from beginning to end by the story it told. Was that story totally true? Probably not. Were the characters as portrayed absolutely true to the people involved? Probably not. Was what we were given in place of absolute truth and correct character delineation worth seeing? For me, it was ten stars worth seeing, so that obviates the need for further discussion, at least on my part. I thought every performance in the film was something of a standout, but especially those by Richard Dreyfuss as Al Haig and Holland Taylor (who, despite enjoying what I now find to be considerable fame as, in particular, a TV actress, I did not know) as Nancy Reagan, but also by Colm Feore as Caspar Weinberger. In fact, this is the best thing I have ever seen from Dreyfuss, who has wonderful memories for me in JAWS and MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS. The pure suspense of what has happened, is happening, and may yet happen is fantastic when you consider that everyone seeing this film already knows exactly what did or didn't happen. That is the mark of a good scriptwriter and a good director. Oliver Stone apparently produced this film, so that the Conservatives are jumping all over it as some kind of Leftist propaganda. I am a Conservative, and I got no such inkling from anything I saw here. It seemed to me that, for all practical purposes, Haig and Nancy Reagan were the two most admirable people to be seen in it. Mrs. Reagan's all-consuming love for "Ronnie" may be laughable to some, but not usually to people who grew up in Middle American Happy Households of the Reagans' life period. Haig, often portrayed (here and elsewhere) as a loose cannon, seems to me to be the only person in the story who has complete clarity of thought throughout (except for that one major "I am in charge" statement to the Press, a simple verbal faux pas to anyone who is not a conspiracy theorist). What surprises me most, and what not one reviewer here addresses, is that the film ultimately seems to come down on his side, when, as he leaves the Crisis Room for the last time and is asked what he will say to the Press the next day, he faces everyone down and quietly details every single thing he has found wrong in the way the crisis was responded to - from losing the President's nuclear access code card, to non-working telephones in a time of national emergency, to the near war engendered with Russia due to Weinberger's blunder, etc., etc. - and then says that, like a good soldier, he will fall on his sword before he makes these things public. In the end, and given the 'facts' as presented in this dramatization, any viewer taking the story at face value would have to agree that, if there was anything that had to be saved for the Nation during those first 24 hours after the assassination attempt, it was only Haig's overwhelming confidence and action that could be counted on to do so.Truth in reporting: Either shortly before or shortly after the Reagan Administration came into power, I met for dinner and a show with an old army buddy of mine from Tennessee and his family, this at the New York Hilton. As we entered the elevator to come down to ground level, who should be in that same elevator, all by himself, but General Alexander Haig, whom we took the liberty of speaking to for perhaps one minute. He was extremely friendly, but I cannot recall ever having been in the presence of anyone who exuded more charisma than General Haig, and that was almost 40 years ago, so however Richard Dreyfuss may have played him in this film, he hardly overdid that aspect of his personality.

After having seen this film on Showtime the other day, I was interested in seeing what the other Users of IMDB.com had to say about it. And I have to admit, after reading all of the reviews here-in, I still don't know what they thought about the film. I know what they think of Reagan, Haige, Bush Sr, the "Hollywood Left", The "Hawkish Right", Oliver Stone, even Bill Clinton. But I don't really know anything about what people thought of the movie. This is because NOBODY FREEKIN' REVIEWED THE MOVIE! Everyone seems so intent on protecting and/or attacking one political view or another that everyone seems to have forgotten that this is a FREEKING MOVIE, People, not REAL LIFE. The events portrayed in the film are based on actual events, which means that this is NOT a documentary. If you don't like the way this film portrayed Reagan or Nancy or Haige or Cap or Bush, then here is the solution you are looking for; don't watch it. Simple, right? Likewise if you think this is a factual indictment of the Reagan Administration and/or the Republican Party, then I beg you to stop getting your news from Jon Stewart. Don't like Clinton? Then don't vote for him. Don't like the Republicans? Then don't vote for them. Frankly, I don't care. If I wanted to hear a political discussion, I would engage in one on one of the millions of political websites on the web. I am a very political person, but I can also understand the difference between a movie and real life. If you can not, then perhaps you should not be posting film reviews. And for the record, some technical errors/goofs aside, I thought that this was a taunt, well acted, enjoyable DRAMA about a day that almost changed the course of American History. It is DEFINITELY better than the 4-plus stars that have been afforded it. Check it out; just remember that is a movie, not a historical documentary. We CAN remember that, can't we?

Although the makers of the film used the usual disclaimer of part of the film being "fictionalized", it was apparent they were passing it off as factual. I was surprised and somewhat angered at the sloppiness in one key scene, where Haig is upbraided for misquoting the constitution. In the scene they give Haig a copy of the 25th amendment. However, nowhere in the amendment is reference made to the order of succession beyond the vice president. In fact, the Presidential Succession Act, passed in 1947, and not a part of the constitution, defines the order of succession. This is easily researched and shows a lack of apreciation of history on the part of the film makers. Come on, gentlemen, let's be more careful.

Hollywood leans so far left it can't even comprehend what the center looks like. Yet it has the power to influence what future skulls full of mush, as Kingsfield would say, think about the past.A recent tv movie about the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings was simply a paranoiac extremist's fictional nightmare. If such a flick had been made about a person of color on the left, the makers would've been tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail as "racists" ("racist" being what is used by the pc crowd rather than the McCarthyists' "communist", though to the same effect).The cheapjack rush job "The Contender" was supposed to parallel the Clinton impeachment, but in trying to preach to us that a public person's private life is none of our business, Hollywood sets up an ingenious double standard: if you're Clarence Thomas, your private life must be public record (so far, no movie has been made about the Robert Bork nomination; perhaps Hollywood hasn't quite been able to skate around the liberal senators getting Bork's "Blockbuster" tape rental record in a vain attempt to try to smear him -- and don't forget bringing up Oliver North's purchase at a lingerie store (which was for ballet costumes for his daughters!). A public figure's private life is no one's business to Hollywood . . . if that person is left of center. Otherwise, the public has a right to know, and Hollywood and the media have a duty to blurt out every detail.Movies about Richard Nixon invariably portray him as a psychopath, whereas movies about JFK invariably portray him as messianic. When we finally forget the disgrace that was Clinton, who committed worse crimes involving the FBI and IRS etc. than Nixon, no doubt Clinton movies of the future will portray him as truly messianic, whereas Clinton his a political Jimmy Swaggart (only more sanctimonious).The Tom Clancy book "The Sum of all Fears" is about middle-eastern terrorists; despite the timeliness of that material, the movie "SoAF" is about right-wing terrorists. We mustn't offend the Taliban or the PLO. But right-wingers don't need to be understood but shot on sight.Which segues us into "The Day Reagan Was Shot", Richard Crenna's Reagan isn't bad, considering the number of Reagan-haters who must exist in Hollywood, but he isn't that important, either. But Alexander Haig, the Secretary of State, and one of the most experienced and savvy men in Washington at that time, is portrayed as an out-and-out nut case, simply on the basis of one erroneous statement. The whole weight of the film, in fact, seems to be, not that the chief executive was gunned down by a movie fan, but the fact that the Republican secretary of state spoke out of turn. The Crisis of the movie is not that a Republican president was shot, but that a secretary of state, who was the highest ranking official in Washington on the spot, had a slip of the tongue. The antagonist if the drama wasn't a true nut case who tried to eliminate an overwhelmingly popular chief executive, but a made-up nut case in the administration.The Hollywood double standard continues in real life and in the movies. When Jerry Falwell said American deserved 9/11, he was castigated; when Clinton said America deserved 9/11, his vapid outspokenness was praised as "courageous". If Hollywood ever makes a movie about the war on Terror the Taliban and Osama can rest easy: the antagonist will be Condi Rice or Colin Powell.