It Reminded Me Of A Heavyweight Boxing Match

Rating: 5/10 (27 December 2009)

In a way this reminded me of a significant heavyweight boxing match. It's not full of excitement. In fact a good 75% of the movie is basically David Frost and Richard Nixon "feeling each other out" and searching for weaknesses in each other. Frost, of course (played by Michael Sheen) is the British journalist who scored a coup by being granted a series of interviews with former US President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) and it truly did remind me of boxing. Nixon was the champ (even though he had resigned) and Frost wanted to beat him. Frost had to call him out; negotiate a chance to take him on (and a price for doing so). Then came the first few interviews, dealing with Nixon's personal life, Vietnam, etc. They danced around each other and developed a certain comfort level with the battle they knew was coming: the interview dealing with Watergate, and whether Frost would get Nixon to confess to any wrongdoing. To that point, the movie truly wasn't especially exciting. It provided a bit of background into the mindsets of the two protagonists: Frost desperately wanting to be taken seriously as a journalist in the US, Nixon seeking to vindicate himself after feeling unfairly pushed out of office. Aside from the background, though, it wasn't overly interesting and the "talking heads" interviews were hard to take seriously. "Talking heads" interviews work best (and I really don't like them at the best of times) when you're at least listening to the real "talking heads." Listening to Oliver Platt or Kevin Bacon pretending to be people who are "talking heads" meant that it was hard to take what they said seriously, even if it was accurate. The whole thing did finally lead up to that last showdown, though, which was quite well done. To go back to the boxing metaphor, these guys had been testing each other for maybe 10 rounds, and it was now coming down to the end - it was time to start swinging and to see who would come out on top. That last interview was dramatic and Langella I thought handled Nixon's persona well.
No - it's not exciting. Nor is it especially historically enlightening. It goes over mostly well trod ground. It is interesting, though - mostly for those who are political junkies, or who have an interest in Watergate or US history. If you don't have those interests, you won't be interested in this. The very slow buildup drags this down somewhat, and in the end I'd say it was OK. It rates about a 5/10.