Dramatic Triumph For Viewers

Rating: 8/10 (16 December 2017)

Frank Langellas Tour De Force Performance of Richard Nixon carries this film very well. While the woman playing Pat Nixon look too young, Frank really brings the resigned Nixon to life in this one. In a way, this is better than the original Frost Interviews because the script can focus more on the dramatic moments that have meaning, intead of the meaningless blather of the majority of them. Sheen's Frost while not great is quite satisfactory here.
Nixon could afford to say anything in these interviews because of Fords "Full & Complete Pardon" of Nixon years earlier. The only reason Nixon was cautious was because of that worry about his legacy. The fact is Nixon would have done what he did again, because he did not realize how wrong it is to try too destroy for his own personal gain. He was not the only one to do that in this era. In the 1972 Primary Election, George McGovern got the Democratic Nomination by creating Super Delegates, changing the party rules so that he ran second in votes in the Democratic Primaries yet got nominated. Then he lost that Election to Nixon in a land slide - and had created rules Hillary Clinton used later to get the nomination over Bernie Sanders. Both times these rules cost the Democrats the chance of winning the election so just recently they finally changed the party rules on Super Delegates. I am not sure these rule changes will help, though it does cover up and protect from arrest Clinton, Wasserman Schultz, and the party from being charged with the same crime as Nixon - conspiring to destroy the 2 party system and rig the election.
Ironically, Nixon did not need to rig the system in 1972. McGovern lost the election (Hubert Humphrey got more votes than McGovern in the Democrats Primary in 1972). In both these times, the voters in the booth decided they were not going to do what the media wanted. Here in this film, Nixon states for the record he did not believe he had committed a crime even though he did otherwise. Clinton still does not believe she has committed any crime either, though a whole lot of people know she did, and her tainted nominated over Sanders has possibly caused more damage to the Democratic Party than McGovern did, as there appears no way a Jimmy Carter will rise up and bring the Democrats back into power in 2020 so far. The Democrats do need an outsider like a Carter, maybe a Scientist, to run against Trump. Will they wake up?
At any rate, the history of Nixon colliding with the celebrity of Frost is very well defined in a top notch script that brings life to these debates, and Ron Howards Direction make this film a solid triumph all the way. While a lot of young folks do not even recall Watergate, the issues here will ring a bell with any voters who read the emails on WikiLeaks that the Democrats wrote last year. Even though these memos prove a blatant attempt to rig the US Election by Democrats (who are still using a Russian Conspiracy that there is no proof of changing the election) there ha still been no charges filed against any Democrat, who have admitted the memos are true.
Nixon admits his guilt in this movie, and it is stunning to hear it, especially for those of us who truly remember Watergate.