Frost/Nixon: Movie Review (2009)

Directed by Ron Howard, written by Peter Morgan, 122 minutes, rated R.

The new Ron Howard movie, “Frost/Nixon,” is brisk and intense, with Howard and company rising to the challenge of recreating the infamous 1977 television interview David Frost scored with disgraced former U.S. president, Richard M. Nixon.

Peter Morgan adapted the script from his own stage play, and the result is one of last year’s best movies, with Frank Langella’s Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actor so beautifully realized as Nixon, some might be surprised that he hasn’t seen a significant push in momentum as we hurdle toward the Academy Awards.

But here’s the thing. The downside of playing a man as loathed as Nixon is that you rarely win major film awards for nailing that person as completely as Langella does here. In Hollywood, the accolades are in the nominations, of which Langella has scored plenty, but has won only one--the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Actor. And who are those people, exactly? A gathering of five who meet at the Bellagio on Fridays and bet on box office receipts?

It doesn’t matter. In this case, what happened in Vegas likely will stay in Vegas for Langella. Academy voters are notoriously a conservative crowd. And so, when most consider their ballots and see Nixon’s name staring up at them, the impulse likely will be to turn to, say, Sean Penn’s performance in “Milk” or Mickey Rourke’s performance in “The Wrestler.” Each was great--and they’re the safer choice.

Whatever happens, Langella is magnificent in the role, for which he won a Tony Award when he played the same part in the Broadway stage production. So, good for the New York crowd. Fearless as usual.

But about the film. It opens with Nixon’s resignation, and from there it goes to Australia, where a cheeky television host named David Frost (a wonderful Michael Sheen, who also was in the Broadway production) sees in that historic moment a chance to advance himself. If he somehow can convince Nixon to allow him to interview him, he at last would be taken seriously.

Getting Nixon to agree turns out to be easy enough. With the legendary agent, Irving “Swifty” Lazar (Toby Jones) backing him, they squeeze Frost for $600,000. It’s money he doesn’t have, so the idea is to get the major networks in the States to pony up the cash. When they don’t, Frost has no choice but to hustle to syndicate the show himself. It isn’t easy, but it turns out to be a cake walk compared to taking on Nixon in the riveting interviews that follow.

Though he has surrounded himself with a crack team of researchers (Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt, each excellent) and a gifted producer (Matthew MacFadyen), Frost mostly is a playboy, which the Nixon camp (including Kevin Bacon) knows. Somehow, in spite of all he has invested in this event, he’d rather spend time with his new girlfriend (Rebecca Hall) and attend movie premieres than buckle down for the fight of his life.

From this, Howard keeps his movie tense with drama and jolts of humor. The dialogue is superb, peppered with unexpected throwaway lines that lift the production, making it and its characters feel vital and real. Initially, Frost fails miserably as Nixon trounces him, and yet in spite of the well-known, historic outcome, you nevertheless find yourself pulling for him to beat Nixon at his own game.

That’s no easy feat, and so the idea that Howard, Morgan and their gifted cast are able to do so while building suspense and, in Nixon’s case, revealing a growing sense of horror, is worth the groundswell of admiration the movie deserves and achieves.

Grade: A

View the trailer here:

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