Gripping entertainment, not history

Rating: 8/10 (5 January 2009)

Although this film is the adaptation of a stage play (by Peter Morgan) about the making of a series of television interviews in 1977 between hotshot but lightweight British interviewer David Frost and Richard Milhous Nixon, disgraced ex-President of the United States, the stage origins do not show. Good use is made of close-ups and the naturalistic settings. However the minor characters remain minor and what we have in essence is a duel. Frost, prodded by his researchers is trying to get Nixon to confess to his Watergate misdemeanours (some might say felonies), and Nixon is fighting while he still can to salvage his shredded reputation. It is a tense and exciting battle.
David Frost himself, although appreciative of the attention, apparently thinks that he was incorrectly portrayed as inexperienced  he had already interviewed Ronald Reagan, Robert Kennedy, Harold Wilson and Ted Heath  but Michael Sheen, a noted Tony Blair impersonator as Frost, has got him down pat. Frost is youthful, eager, determined, and at times desperate, as the whole enterprise, which he has largely funded (none of the American TV networks would participate in the production), seems to be heading towards the rocks. His researchers, particularly the dislikeable James Reston Jr are keen to nail Nixon, but the "smoking gun", a taped conversation with an aide, does not emerge until late in the piece.
Some license has been taken with the facts, for example the revealing telephone conversation between the two the night before the final interview session is entirely fictitious, but it reveals a great deal about what the two men thought of each other. The emphasis on Frost's social life and girlfriends is exaggerated, but there is a point to it  Nixon's obvious envy and social ineptitude. Frank Langdell's Nixon, heavy in defeat, is finely drawn and he evokes some sympathy. In the actual interview Nixon avoided being pathetic and was a good deal more chipper.
As entertainment, Ron Howard's film succeeds very well, but it does not add much to what we know about the Nixon presidency, or Watergate. I continue to be amazed how people with such obvious personal shortcomings can be elected to high office, but it has to be admitted that some Richard Nixon's foreign policies (eg China) were better than some of his successors, even if he was lying when he said "I am not a crook".