"Are you saying the President can do something illegal?"

Rating: 9/10 (3 March 2009)

Apparently, Frost/Nixon was a bit of a plan B for Ron Howard, who shot the movie while waiting for the WGA strike (November 2007-February 2008) to end, since it affected the production start of the Da Vinci Code sequel Angels & Demons (Frost/Nixon was unaffected, given that British writers, such as Peter Morgan, aren't WGA members). Ironically, what was an afterthought has turned out to be his best movie to date, or at least on par with Apollo 13 (and this comes from one of the many who think A Beautiful Mind shouldn't have won the Best Picture Oscar in 2002).
Based on Morgan's own play, which has been widely acclaimed both in London's West End and on Broadway, Frost/Nixon is a fictionalized account of a very real event: the interviews Richard Nixon granted British journalist David Frost. It all starts in 1974, when the Watergate scandal becomes public knowledge and Nixon (Frank Langella) is forced to resign, despite being subsequently acquitted of all charges in a trial. Frost (Michael Sheen), a talk show host, is in Australia when this happens, and once he returns to London he tells his producer John Birt (Matthew MacFadyen) he has a brilliant idea for an interview: the disgraced ex-President. He takes it very lightly at first, thinking it will be nothing more than a chance to achieve greater fame, but after meeting his key researchers, Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) and James Reston (Sam Rockwell), he realizes he's been given the opportunity to stage the trial Nixon never had. However, as Zelnick promptly points out, "there's a reason they call him Tricky Dick", and so the former President, who's in it only for the money, works up a plan with his assistant, Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon), so that Frost will be metaphorically crushed when the interviews begin. Thus, what will later be remembered as a TV event is set in motion.
A film based on a play about television isn't a pitch you hear every day, and in fact the idea would be terrible with the wrong material. It just so happens, then, that Frost/Nixon works a lot better as a movie than a play: whereas the stage version will inevitably favor the remarkable acting (more on that later) over the story's specific context and setting, the film transition allows the director to explore the medium of television, using archive news footage and samples of real Nixon appearances to emphasize the role of the small screen in the picture. In that sense, Howard is the perfect choice - not only has he dealt with the subject before, albeit less successfully (that would be EdTV), his background is in television (Happy Days), therefore he knows his tools better than most of the other directors that were considered for the job (the only reasonable alternative would have been George Clooney). This is openly acknowledged within the film itself, when Rockwell's character comments on "the reductive power of the close-up", an instrument that can make or break any screen production, whether it's film or TV.
Performance-wise, Howard is also deserving of credit for insisting that the two leads from the play reprise their roles in the film, or else he would have turned down the job. The gamble pays off exquisitely, as both Sheen and Langella have a long-lasting silver screen experience (they have even played other iconic figures like Tony Blair and Dracula respectively) and are allowed to build on their stage work surrounded by a typically (for Howard, that is) spot-on supporting cast. Sheen, ostensibly the hero of the tale, has the diffic ult task of portraying an ambitious entertainer without making him look like a buffoon, much like he did with his role as Blair in The Queen, and succeeds in delivering a layered, multi-dimensional performance that lets us see Frost the man, not the TV personality. Langella has the more challenging job, namely handling a part that, movie-wise, everyone still associates with Anthony Hopkins. As it turns out, his Nixon is a towering but flawed presence, a charismatic leader whose weaknesses and arrogance ultimately led him to a very public downfall. In short, it's a more interesting version than what we saw in Oliver Stone's more straightforward biopic.
Bottom line: Frost/Nixon is a compelling portrait of one of the most important televised events of the entire 20th century, a brilliant examination of television as a medium and an extraordinary piece of material for actors. And that's without mentioning the greatest irony of all: Ron Howard voted for Nixon back in 1972...