Much less than it could have been

Rating: 6/10 (13 January 2009)

It's still probably worth seeing, I like 20th century American history stuff a lot, so I had a great interest in the topic. I'll give it a 6 because the subject is worthwhile, and it's not pure junk like a lot of movies out there. But it was a really flat one dimensional portrayal of what is in fact, a fascinating subject - a duel between a British interviewer and one of the USA's most fascinating presidents.
The best acting was the Frost character. And the movie dos do a good job of portraying what he put on the line, as well as the 'winner take all' nature of the duel. His underlings were very unlikable characters, although one of them did convey the single minded 'get Nixon' negativity that many people had at the time, and a lot of people were happy to move on from.
The first half of the movie is really pretty boring. It was a completely missed opportunity to better portray who Nixon was, and what he had on the line. Love him, hate him, despise or respect him, he was a fascinating character. A lot of people seeing this movie are too young to remember him, and those older still have things they can learn. Just looking on hulu last night, I found stuff on Nixon I'd never seen before
hulu.com nbc-news-time-capsule-richard-m-nixon-in-his-own-words
does anyone think that some of this material wouldn't have given this movie more depth in the first half, and could have replaced some of the 'fluff'? The whole movie can be pretty much summed up by 'does Frost get Nixon, or not?', which may have been the primary issue in the interviews, but certainly not all of it. Most people, including myself, already thought he was guilty - what difference does it really make whether he admits it or not? The acting of Nixon is mixed - I thought it was very weak in the beginning, but did come together more at the end, as did the movie - the movie does at least, improve and come together at the end.
But there was more to those interviews than 'slipping up and confessing Watergate'. These interviews, like Nixon himself, had more than the one dimension of Watergate. It was a capstone of one of the most significant players (whether he was a good guy, or not) of the Cold War, a potential nuclear conflict that was the biggest threat humanity has ever known This movie completely missed that.