Frost/Nixon

Frank Langella delivers such a masterful performance in Frost/Nixon that he should have thrown both arms in the air and flashed victory signs at Oscar voters during the closing credits. He magnificently portrays disgraced president Richard Nixon's bitterness, bluster, and bile without descending into easy caricature. More importantly, he manages to elicit genuine sympathy for a man whose arrogance, self-deception, and criminality led to his well-deserved downfall.

Michael Sheen is also excellent as the ambitious and relentlessly optimistic David Frost, a Brit whose glory days as an American talk-show host are behind him. Hoping to revive his career, Frost approaches Nixon about doing a series of TV interviews in 1977, three years after Nixon's resignation.

Frost is prepared to pay dearly for the privilege, both literally and figuratively. He guarantees $600,000 to Nixon, much of it from his own pocket, despite the fact that no TV network wants the programs. Worse for Frost than the potential financial loss is knowing he will be regarded as a laughingstock if he can't get Tricky Dick to reveal anything new about the Watergate scandal. That's the last thing Nixon wants to do, of course. Gloweringly resentful of his political-pariah status, he hopes to rehabilitate his tarnished image by outmaneuvering such a journalistic lightweight.

The film intersperses talking-head commentaries by the cast with recreations of Frost and Nixon's preparations and on-camera showdowns. Frost's team includes skeptical but determined journalists James Reston, Jr. (Sam Rockwell) and Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt), his supportive producer John Birt (Matthew Macfadyen), and Frost's surprisingly sweet jet-set girlfriend Caroline Cushing (Rebecca Hall). Nixon's corner-man, the fanatically devoted ex-Marine chief of staff Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon), is so contemptuous of the proceedings that he seems to reside in a permanent state of "you can't handle the truth!"

What makes the movie special is the way the interviews increasingly become more like rounds of a brainy boxing match than a dry drawing-room debate. Frost is rope-a-doped at first, unable to land a blow as Nixon runs out the clock with what Birt refers to as "self-serving 23-minute homilies." Brennan, meanwhile, coaches Nixon to "control the space, don't let him in." Nixon himself, in a late-night phone call to Frost, coldly notes that only one of them will be left in the limelight. "And for the other, it'll be the wilderness," he says, "with nothing and no one for company, but those voices ringing in our heads."

Peter Morgan, who adapted the script from his stage play, manages to make even wholly fictitious scenes like that one feel as true as transcripts. And did Frost really wear "effeminate" Italian loafers that end up playing such a meaningfully symbolic role in the story? If not, he should have.

Apparently knowing that a character piece like this would be undermined by too much flashiness, director Ron Howard also clearly understands what Reston refers to as "the reductive power of the close-up." In Howard's tight shots of Nixon's sweaty face, Frank Langella manages to convey so much about the defeated man's character even when he's not saying a word that it's hard not to feel sorry for the rambling, rationalizing old crook.

The story's parallels to the current Bush administration are obvious (Nixon's declaration that "if the president does it, it's not illegal," as well as the concept of giving an unrepentant president "the trial he never had"), but they aren't hammered home.

This unexpectedly exciting face-off between an underestimated interrogator and an overconfident con man is one of the best movies of the year.

—James Dawson
12.03.08

Critic David Thomson once pointed out that by the time Ron Howard was 30, he had already spent more time on television than anyone else his age. Those years working inside a TV show's tightly structured shooting schedule instilled in him an extremely efficient approach to directing, like the filmmakers during the heyday of the studio system. His movies are usually solid, middlebrow crowd pleasers that make up for their occasional lack of substance with first-class professionalism. Frost/Nixon turns out to be something much more, in part because it's one of the best scripts he's ever been handed. The movie, adapted by Peter Morgan from his award-wining play, analyzes how Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) sought image rehabilitation after Watergate by sitting down for a lengthy interview with British television personality David Frost (Michael Sheen). The screenplay nimbly establishes Frost as both a likable fellow with a natural gift for broadcasting and an incredibly shallow man whose interest in his interview subjects never extends beyond how good they are for his program. In a bid for both big ratings and industry respect, Frost offers to interview the disgraced former president Nixon, who accepts both because of the large payday and because he savors the opportunity to change the public's low opinion of him -- something he thinks will be easy to do because he considers Frost a lightweight. In any movie or play, portraying Nixon is difficult because so much footage of Tricky Dick is burned into the public consciousness. An actor could probably get by on pure mimicry -- Nixon's mannerisms and voice were remarkably unique -- but a mere impersonation will gloss over the depth of the character's inner turmoil. In Frank Langella's expert performance, he presents both Nixon's deeply embedded paranoia and his formidable intelligence as the reasons for his political rise, as well as his epic decline. Langella augments this Shakespearean level of tragedy with the character's almost total lack of natural social grace -- he doesn't feel any actual connection with other people. His social awkwardness pours out during a late-night phone call to Frost during which the former president fires off an alcohol-fueled rant about the grudges he's held on to since his school days -- grudges that fuel his anger and paranoia. Regardless of whether this call really happened, the scene allows Langella to do the kind of emotional high-wire act that brings this sensibly directed movie to life. It's the kind of focused performance that feels lived in, probably in large part because he played the role on Broadway. His performance also owes a debt to co-star Michael Sheen, who embodies Frost's shallowness with such ease that the character's slow acceptance of responsibility feels entirely genuine; he makes Frost a worthy opponent for Nixon. The two leads might have the showiest parts, but the rest of the cast offers flawless support. Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell are great as Bob Zelnick and James Reston, the two journalists hired by Frost to help him prepare for the interviews. Platt is dependably brilliant, giving every single one of his lines a welcome comic spin, and Rockwell imbues the crusading Reston -- whose goal is to get a confession out of Nixon -- with a nervous energy that keeps viewers on edge. In addition to the performances and the screenplay, the timing of the movie makes it something special. Produced and released during the waning months of George W. Bush's second term, the film version of Frost/Nixon will be enjoyed by some as a wish-fulfillment fantasy. For those who would like to see Bush submit to an interrogation like this, the climax -- when Nixon does reveal his darkest impulses for Frost's cameras -- will trigger a much stronger dramatic catharsis than it might have otherwise. The timing gives Frost/Nixon a level of relevance that won't last past awards season; however, the craftsmanship, acting, and history lesson all make it among the most satisfying films of Ron Howard's career. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide