Frost/Nixon (Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Oliver Platt, Kevin Bacon) – With the Broadway play making its national tour with Stacy Keach, this Ron Howard film features the two actors who starred in the stage play, Frank Langella (Dave, Dracula) and Michael Sheen (The Queen). Author Peter Morgan deftly adapted his own script to a screenplay in a manner that allows Howard to create greater tension than the play does. Here, Howard shows his genius. Like Apollo 13, this is a small story that takes place on a small set whose outcome is well known, which is not generally a formula for a successful movie. But Howard has a great cast again, which allows him to explore the characters through their mannerisms, their facial expressions, and their body language. David Frost is the cocky playboy whose charm has made him a popular, jet-setting, party-loving television star in England and Australia whose American show, That Was the Week That Was, was moderately popular. A good interviewer in the mode of Johnny Carson, not Mike Wallace, he in an entertainer first and a journalist barely. When he decides to pursue an interview with disgraced ex-president Richard Nixon, it is more for the entertainment potential than for historical significance. But that changes when he hires a researcher, James Reston, Jr. (Rockwell), and a TV journalist, Bob Zelnick (Platt), who want the confession and apology about Watergate that Nixon never made. But is the frothy Frost capable of eliciting the desired reaction from the man known as Tricky Dick? Or is he overmatched by the career master politician and manipulator?
Frost puts his money and his credibility on the line while Nixon wants both the money and the forum to tell his version of his presidency on the air. Frost seems like the perfect foil for Nixon’s resurrection three years after his unprecedented resignation. Sheen is impressive as Frost, capturing the TV personality’s persona as well as his drive. Frank Langella is uncanny as Nixon, capturing the ex-president’s vocal cadence and mannerisms despite only a marginal physical resemblance. Langella is a marvelous actor who has played mostly mean characters, thus fitting the Nixon persona perfectly. As an imitator, he is marvelous here, good enough to put him into the Oscar race. Having seen the play, I was convinced that it would be difficult to transfer it effectively to the big screen with enough tension to capture an audience. In the hands of a typical director, it wouldn’t have. But Ron Howard makes it work in a way that keeps the audience engaged, if not mesmerized. That is as much as you could expect from a story that anyone born before 1960 knows all too well.