Interesting, but not a masterpiece by any means

Rating: 7/10 (17 March 2010)

The Frost/Nixon interviews were a television milestone, but director Ron Howard sees them as more than they were. Historically were they that important? Sure some people found it satisfying to see Richard Nixon put under pressure. The film is structured around Richard Nixon being put under pressure, but in the end I just asked myself "Does this really matter?" I certainly don't think David Frost is some sort of hero. I think David Frost at best is a historical Trivial Pursuit footnote. In the end Richard Nixon didn't get punished for his deeds, and he did achieve a certain dignity before his death. The movie isn't about Frost and Nixon. It's about Frost being some cultural warrior for a society that hates Richard Nixon. It takes a pretentious viewpoint to think of Frost as that. I kept thinking of Tom Hanks in Mike Nichol's "Charlie Wilson's War". Howard is revising history to bend to his own ends. Frost/Nixon isn't a political thriller, at best it's an uneven drama. I think the film would have been far more effective as a character study about these two flawed men.
Richard Nixon is made to be some sort of villain here. This is a lazy characterization and even the strongest performance by Frank Langella couldn't have saved the lens of this Nixon character. It's boring to see Nixon as some sort of villain. Howard having grown up in that Watergate generation wants to demonize him I suppose. Nixon was by far the more interesting character in the film. What appealed to me about him was the psychological motives of the character. Either Nixon was truly a devil, or he truly believed what he was doing was in the best interests of the country. Historically Nixon is an interesting conundrum. Had Watergate never been discovered one might have viewed him as a decent president. Langella is good in portraying Nixon as someone who believes what he was doing was right, but there are moments when the lens is just far too skewed. What is the audience supposed to think when they see Toby Jones, and Kevin Bacon as Nixon's handlers? They are creepy people working for a creepy man. Frost is the good to Nixon's evil. This is a far less compelling approach than the ripe character study these men provide.
Frost is a moral crusader, and that is a hard pill to swallow. "Why didn't you burn the tapes" he wants to ask Nixon as his big opening. What's the motive behind his interview? I think it would be far more interesting for Frost to be what he was, a comedian turned into an awkward interviewer. I mean what does Frost have to gain from his interviewing Nixon? Howard suggests that Frost had sound goals all the way from the beginning, that he saw himself as the man to heal America. This Capra-esquire approach is stupid and boring. Ratings, money, and prestige were obviously a big portion of why David Frost sought out to get Nixon in his chair.
For a film entitled Frost/Nixon this picture seems awfully crowded. It's a match between two men. We get to know the sidekicks a little more than I would have personally preferred. Sam Rockwell plays dialogue that is forced and inorganic and he is the focus of more scenes than are necessary. Rockwell plays a caricature of a liberal scholar who felt personally betrayed by Nixon. Ironically the film's greatest failure though is it's inability to truly delve deep into the feelings of Watergate. To truly understand why these interviews were an important cultural moment we need to understand the culture of this time. We don't get to view into the culture.
The idea of cameras never lying is brought up at the end of the film. Television is a business made of lies and false realities. It's a business befitting of immoral men. We have a film about ideas rather than a film about men. The intended effect is not present.