Rating: MMMM

Review of Frost/Nixon first published in a January 2009 issue of Spark*, the newspaper of Reading University Students’ Union.

Director: Ron Howard
Starring: Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Kevin Bacon, Sam Rockwell
Running time: 122 mins

Admittedly I haven’t seen Peter Morgan’s original play, but it really is hard to imagine any medium other than celluloid for which to present the drama played out between Richard Nixon and David Frost in their 1977 televised interviews. The film opens with newsreel footage of the social and political conditions of 1974 and the resignation of President Richard Nixon, then in disgrace following the discovery of the Watergate scandal. For those not familiar with this period in American political history and the events that preceded and followed it, there is helpful narration from characters which form the support teams of both Frost and Nixon. Three years later, Frost embarks on an ambitious project to interview the hated former President.

Before the interviews take place, there are some excellent moments of comedy and drollery, surprisingly more often than not in the form of witty one-liners from Nixon (Frank Langella), delivered with perfect deadpan humour. Sam Rockwell is refreshingly cast against type as James Reston, Jr. researcher keen to uphold the ideals of democracy and freedom, to ultimately procure a confession and apology from the man who he sees has shamed and degraded the presidency. Michael Sheen is very good, mimicking David Frost’s voice and mannerisms exactly. It is Frank Langella’s film though, putting every last ounce of energy into arguably what will be one of the best performances of the year.

Director Ron Howard, it seems, has lost much of the self-indulgent tone displayed in earlier work such as Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, subsequently rendering Frost/Nixon all the more potent and tense as a result. And tension is the unmistakeable motif here, seen from start to finish. Sexual tension seen early-on between ‘playboy’ Frost and new flame Caroline Cushing (Rebecca Hall), economic tension for the financing of the interviews (Frost practically financed the interviews out of his own pocket), and the most important tension of all: that between a disgraced and crooked President and the misled American public that he deceived. At the climax of the fourth interview, we see the broken image of a man, bitterly depressed with self-loathing finally and desperately apologise to the country he lied to – and what a mesmerising moment that is.

Rating: MMMM