classicsoncall My summary line would have been "I forgot to duck" by the President to his wife at the hospital, but his opening remark to a joint session of Congress upon his return seemed more appropriate. The man had a great sense of humor, as evidenced also by the way he summed up his Alzheimer's diagnosis. That wasn't in the film, but reportedly he stated that 'he'll get to meet new people every day'. For students of history, and even for those who aren't, this presentation of "Killing Reagan" was as best as I can tell, a faithful rendering of the events before, during and after the failed assassination attempt by the troubled John Hinckley Jr. (Kyle S. More). Some viewers will undoubtedly be confused by the opening of the story when it appears that Hinckley was stalking President Jimmy Carter. That scene reinforces the idea that Hinckley was not acting out a politically or ideologically motivated assassination attempt, and as the story goes on to reveal, he was fully obsessed with the idea of impressing actress Jodie Foster to notice and acknowledge him as a worthy suitor. The one fact to come out of this documentary-like program that I must have missed during the news coverage at the time was the information about the bullet that injured the President. It actually ricocheted off the Presidential limousine that he was about to enter for his next stop. I'm puzzled about that now and wonder how I missed that information at the time. The other notable item about this presentation was the way it humanized the First Lady. Accounts of the era depicted Nancy Reagan as almost a Svengali type of character who shielded her husband from bad news and detractors within his circle. The business about her reliance on astrology is given appropriate consideration without making her seem extreme in her beliefs.Over all, I thought this was a well done treatment of the Reagan/Hinckley story, based on the Bill O'Reilly book as part of his 'Killing' series. There were critics of the book who thought O'Reilly didn't play fair with Reagan's Alzheimer period, but that didn't seem to come into play here. For anyone who wasn't around or wasn't paying attention in 1981, this is about the best one can hope for in describing the events as they occurred. Without actually being there, one gets a pretty good bird's eye look at the behind the scenes care given President Reagan and the way his Cabinet responded to what could have been another black day in the history of the country.

Fredtimbo Had I known Ridley Scott and Rod Lurie were involved with Killing Reagan I would have watched the movie months ago. But the real surprise was Tim Matheson and Cynthia Nixon's superb performances and endearing portrayal of the first couple. From the director of The Contender, another one of my favorite movies, Killing Reagan is one of the best docudramas ever.

Desertman84 Killing Reagan is a TV movie based on the book written by FOX analyst Bill O' Reilly that tells the story of the late President Ronald Reagan particularly his attempted assassination by John Hinckley Jr.after delivering a speech at the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30,1981. Tim Matheson stars as President Reagan,Cynthia Nixon as the President's wife Nancy,Kyle S.More as Hinkley, together with Joe Chrest,Joel Murray and Michael H. Cole.The screenplay tells a parallel story of President Reagan and Hinkley from 1980 when the former is busy campaigning for the 1980 US Presidential elections against incumbent President Jimmy Carter and the latter watching President Carter from afar and later being caught in the airport for illegal possession of several firearms. Then the development of the story continues when Reagan gets elected as US President and Hinkley starts to show signs of mental impairment as he develops a fascination for child actress Jodie Foster.It concludes on that fateful day on March 1981 when Hinkley attempts on killing President Reagan fails and gets arrested in the process.Director Rod Lurie does a great job of recreating the events despite the fact that the story told does not add anything to the story already known by many Americans.It was nice to see great performances from Matheson and Nixon as the President and Nancy respectively.There was a lot of great dramatic and humorous scenes between them on their road to the White House as well as when the failed assassination attempt took place in spite of this somewhat rote depiction of the story.

classicalsteve In the 19th century, stories abound of President Abraham Lincoln walking down the streets of Washington D.C., unworried about his safety, even though several million southern soldiers were pledged to kill him. (Alexander Gardner had taken what turned out to be Lincoln's last photograph, and the president had walked to the photo studio.) The Secret Service did not yet exist, and when it was inaugurated two months after Lincoln's assassination, it was not an operation to protect the president, but a federal investigatory unit to combat currency counterfeiting. One hundred years later, particularly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, ensuring the safety of the US President became a 24/7 job. What changed? Probably the biggest difference is the president's perpetual presence in national and international media, in the newspapers but mostly on television. Interestingly, television and film actors have the same problem: because of hyped media, there are people in the world, some of whom are not playing with a full deck, who become obsessed with media figures.The made-for-cable film, "Killing Reagan", focuses on the events just before, during and after John Hinckley (Kyle S. More) attempted to assassinate then US President Ronald Reagan outside a Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C. only two months into his presidency in 1981. Hinckley was a disturbed young man not obsessed with Reagan per se, but instead with actress Jodi Foster. He was also obsessed with the film "Taxi Driver" starring Robert De Niro and also a very young Jodi Foster in a supporting role. In the film, the protagonist Travis Bickle fantasizes about plotting the assassination of a presidential candidate. Hinckley convinced himself that he could win over Foster's admiration by killing President Reagan, which given Foster's attitudes towards tougher gun restrictions, seems at face value absurd. However, stalkers live in their own "truth".The film mainly reveals much of the behind-the-scenes activity surrounding the assassination attempt which came very close to being a replay of Dallas in November, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed by deranged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was 24 when he killed Kennedy (and was killed shortly thereafter by a local nightclub owner, Jack Ruby), and Hinckley was 25 when he shot Reagan. According to the film, Hinckley had been "stalking" President Carter during his reelection campaign, again probably inspired by "Taxi Driver". He moves to New Haven, CT, where Foster was an undergraduate, and constantly calls her and sends her postcards and letters. However, Hinckley's moves are never reciprocated, only rebuffed.On the other side of the tracks is President Ronald Reagan (Tim Matheson in a convincing performance) and Nancy Reagan (Cynthia Nixon in what could be an Emmy-nominated performance) and their cabinet heads. What the public may not have known is how close another US President came to dying in office not two decades from the last time. In a split-second decision that influenced world history in the wake of the attempt, Jerry Parr (Joe Chrest), after noticing the president coughing up blood, changed the direction of the car from the White House to George Washington University Hospital, which was less than 4 minutes from the Hilton. Even when Reagan entered the hospital, it wasn't certain he would live, as the surgery to remove the bullet turned out to be far more problematic than anticipated. Some contradictory reports had been issued by the press, at first that Reagan had not been hit but later that he had. While in surgery, several of Reagan's cabinet members bicker about who is in charge, since then Vice President George HW Bush was in Air Force Two in Texas.A good cast tells a very compelling and interesting story about one of the scariest episodes of the 1980's. Many who were alive at the time remember vividly the assassination of John F. Kennedy which, for some of them like my parents, seemed not that long in the past. I hadn't been born when JFK was assassinated, but I was in Junior High School at the time of Reagan's brush with death, and I remember where I was when I heard the news of the shooting. Although it didn't receive nearly as much publicity, President Barack Obama was shot at during his first term in office on the presidential balcony at the White House. The shot completely missed but only by inches. If there's anything which can be said of holding the office of US President, it's a dangerous job.