A Portrait Of A Career Lost Provide 3 Landmark Career Turns...Excellent.

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2008)

This film is remarkable and it literally provides three career turns...First, late in his acting career Frank Langella gives such a tour de force performance that this is unequivocally his finest work. He simply becomes Richard Nixon in such an uncanny way that words fail to adequately describe it. I liken it to a seasoned immensely successful performer who luckily was chosen to do the work he was obviously made for. If there ever was a more tragic figure in American politics no one would believe it as Mr. Langella nails all the many juxtapositions that Nixon, the mortal man, possessed. Second, Michael Sheen, quite early in his career, reaches a pinnacle in his portrayal of David Frost which for the entirety of his future he will be hard pressed to surpass...He's that convincing. Frost, a kind of international playboy "quasi-showhost" would seem to be the most unlikely candidate for such a landmark interview series. He possessed just the right enigmatic charisma and polar-opposite personality from Richard Nixon that lured Nixon into doing something no one else, try as they did, could. The gravity of which simply cannot be understated and Sheen's performance gives realism and credibility as to how he was the right man at the right time in history to achieve such. Finally, Ron Howard, whose work has always been eminently bankable yet purely entertainment and somewhat trite in weight, rises to the top of the heap of all-time great directors. He has made his heavyweight masterpiece, a movie which will likely be discussed a hundred years from now. One senses he is moving into a new phase and while he may not eclipse this great statement I have great admiration and hope he may again equal it.
I recommend this movie to anyone who even has a passing interest in politics, history, law, or human behavior. The importance of what happened to the American people and President Richard M. Nixon, against the period in American history in which it occurred, is simply impossible to understate. A movie derived on a play based on this seems as though it likely could not undertake such a monumental task and succeed, yet it does so with such clear authority and naked emotional power that I, for one, am awed by it. A must see. Excellent in every way.