TV Article The Assassination of Richard Nixon By Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman is the former film critic at Entertainment Weekly. He left EW in 2014. EW's editorial guidelines Published on January 17, 2005 05:00AM EST Sean Penn plays the sort of flamboyantly recessive loser-putz (wormy mustache; whiny, begging voice) who, by now, may be more familiar from the movies than he is from real life. Set in 1974, this attempt to create a middle-class Taxi Driver has a creepy, meticulous exactitude.