Clever entertainment, with one of those wonderful, political non-apologetic apologies for a climax

Rating: 8/10 (4 January 2009)

Entertainment, it is; history, it's not. David Frost, if he doesn't hate Michael Sheen's amusing parody of himself, should. Sheen's Frost is a young man in love with the excitement and high life of being a television celebrity, as eager and quick as a chipmunk and as shallow as a plate. The portrayal of Richard Nixon, however, is misleading. For the purposes of a cathartic audience conclusion, Ron Howard (the director), Peter Morgan (the playwright) and Frank Langella, (the actor, in an amazing performance) lead us up to an emotional climax which is played for something that looks like Shakespearean tragedy...a great man, torn by internal conflicts, finally brought down (on television yet) by the recognition of his own deep flaws. Well, come on. This certainly makes a surprisingly effective movie, but Richard Nixon is a more suitable study for students of morbid psychology and for those who appreciate the hypocrisy of self-serving politicians. Nixon was no Greek protagonist, just a hard-working, deeply insecure, ferociously ambitious man who was willing to do whatever was needed to defeat those he thought of as his enemies and to prove to the world he was a worthy man. This is the mediocrity of loveless ambition matched with lots of Scotch, not the tragedy of self-inflicted wounds in a noble cause.
Howard and Morgan allow one of those political non-apologies to pass as revelation. "I let down the American people," not "I created the climate that led to the crime of a burglary, and then I initiated and took part in the cover-up...and I was wrong." As much to the point as anything, Howard and Morgan give us such an old-fox portrayal of slyness and one-upmanship, which confounds Frost's young puppy, that most of us probably wind up routing for Nixon. All this works dramatically, of course, when the puppy finally grows some teeth...but then we're merely left with that masterful non-apology and a moment of supremely effective acting by Frank Langella. The only part of Frost/Nixon that brings into focus the real-life ruthless danger of a man like Nixon in the presidency is the moment when Frost teases out of Nixon the ex-president's belief that whatever a president does is always legal because it is the president who does it. We know (and should be scared to death) that there are political lawyers and ambitious political hacks who agree. That moment, for anyone who values the Constitution and those strangely effective concepts of the separation of power and the rule of law, was, in my view, passed over too lightly.
Frost/Nixon is a fascinating and enjoyable bit of movie entertainment based on a fascinating and enjoyable stage play. It's expecting too much to think it would be more than that.
For those who might be interested in another portrayal of Nixon, this time alone in his study, deep in Scotch and self-pity, talking into a recorder while he justifies his life, watch Robert Altman's, Donald Freed's and Arnold Stone's Secret Honor. Philip Baker Hall as Nixon is mesmerizing.