Tricky Dick gets his day

Rating: 8/10 (14 June 2009)

I was born after the Nixon presidency, and so I've only heard of everything that Tricky Dick did. As it stands, I've never seen the Frost/Nixon interviews. But Ron Howard's movie "Frost/Nixon" - based on Peter Morgan's Broadway play - tells the story magnificently.
Having resigned and seen his career ruined, Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) retired to his San Clemente villa. But English talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) got the idea to interview the former president to get his opinion. Clearly this was a risky move with Nixon's bad reputation. But Frost suspected that something could come of this. So it came to be when, during the fourth segment, Nixon said two important things: "When the president does it, it's not illegal," and "I let the American people down." While the second comment was obvious all along, the first goes to show the precedent set by Nixon's crimes and Ford's pardoning of him: subsequent presidents did even worse things. The movie can easily be seen as an allusion to Bush.
The characters' physical appearances are like their own characters: the slimy, tanned Nixon as opposed to the affable, photogenic Frost. It was good that they showed how Jim Reston (Sam Rockwell) pushed Frost to ask Nixon about his escalation of the Vietnam War, since that was a far worse crime than Watergate (not to mention spying on peaceful citizens, destroying the Black Panthers and American Indian Movement, re-segregating the country and overthrowing Chile's government).
Overall, I recommend this movie, as a look at history and a look at the present. We must never forget the past or we risk repeating it.
Also starring Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt, Matthew Macfadyen, Rebecca Hall, Patty McCormack, Toby Jones and Andy Milder.