Frost/Nixon has been dubbed "Rocky for journalists," appropriately, since you can learn more about the interview-as-warfare from it than you would in any first-year journalism class.
But there's much more to this play-turned-movie than the tricks involved in making an interrogator look out of his depth, or interrogating a bad-guy to the wall. This retelling of the infamous 1977 for-pay interviews between dilettante British "chat host" David Frost and the disgraced president-in-exile Richard Nixon, touches on issues that are even more relevant today.
The whole pugilistic atmosphere that marks our public discourse is shown being born in this hubris-driven tragedy/redemption-story (think of today's presidential debates and the constant talk of a "knockout punch"). Moreover, in an era that presaged any cable news network (CNN, the granddaddy of them all, wouldn't start up for years) it showed how one stubborn, ego-driven showman could circumvent the Big Three networks and grab huge ratings with something very much like news.
Most importantly, with Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard offers a terrific example of how to turn a smart Broadway play into a movie without ruining it. With a limited budget, Howard's flourishes are few -- smallish crowd scenes, exteriors of Nixon's Casa Pacifica post-Watergate retreat, scenes in the Nixon Library. It's the movie's intimacy that breathes life into the tale, from nervous tics that betray Frost's bravado, to the slightest of eyebrow raises that mark Langella's Oscar-calibre performance.
About that last, it's said that most people had the same reaction to the play -- that they felt his Nixon impression needed work in the first scenes, but that he was amazing by the end, a funny take since he played the role more than 300 times. That transformation is actually the audience's. His is not a Nixon impression, nor does he ever say anything Nixonian like "let me make one thing perfectly clear." Langella's Nixon is all about the intelligent eyes, the suspicion, the sizing-up.
It is, however, Michael Sheen as Frost, who moves the narrative. Having once tasted stardom in America, he is in a kind of entertainment-hell when we meet him, hosting Frost Over Australia.
More than mere if-I-can-make-it-there ambition, however, Sheen's Frost craves gravitas, a hunger belied by his lounge-lizard come-ons to women and the light televised banter that was his forte. For his part, Nixon -- egged on by his ex-Marine aide and protector Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon) -- sees Frost as the lightweight sparring partner he could climb over in his own defence, stage one in his return to the public eye and political office.
Bacon is just one of a coterie of supporting cast who excel as veritable "corner men" in Frost/Nixon. Sam Rockwell is all simmering anger as James Reston, the Watergate chronicler whose participation as part of Frost's research team hinges on Nixon getting "the trial he never got." He and Oliver Platt, as former ABC news producer Bob Zelnick are the conscience of the film. (One of the Devil's minions, the late Hollywood agent Swifty Lazar, is brilliantly played in a hilarious cameo by Toby Jones). And Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) lifts the "girlfriend" role a notch above as Frost's girl-of-the-moment to whom Nixon takes a liking.
In the end, however, Frost/Nixon is about sweat -- Nixon's of course, and more tellingly, the unflappable Frost's when he realizes he is losing on two sides, commercially and in the interview chair.
Seldom have two people talking packed such a punch.
(This film is rated PG)
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