watchable but disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (28 April 2009)

I believe Ron Howard would make a great filmmaker if he were a little more unconventional. In his best movies, he has no "faults" but there is always something essential missing. In "Frost/Nixon", this something was context. If anyone who knew nothing of Watergate watched the movie, he would think Frost was a hero for making Nixon confess (sort of). He never did give the "trial" the film said the American people wanted. Using the information gathered during 3 days of research based on the "hunch" of a research partner, Nixon can no longer keep up the face. And, the film suggests, it is not because he is cornered, it is because he, too, is a human and has a conscience and he wants to confess anyway. As if Woodward and Bernstein or hundreds of researchers in the Watergate trial hadn't gotten to him even a little bit. The film has no build-up and no complex characters, in the sense that even the characters in fact are complex, they are not developed that way in this film. Frost, a womanizer with a future to secure and Nixon, a fallen president with a reputation to reclaim. That's all we see and really, there is not much more to get. For the real drama about Watergate, everyone, "All the President's Men" is a must see.