Film Review

09 January 2009 03:09 BST

Frost/Nixon

Directed by Ron Howard, showing at the BFI London Film Festival, starring Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Matthew Macfayden and Kevin Bacon, 122 minutes.

In a nutshell...

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

What's it all about?

Just two years after making its debut as a stage play, Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon is coming to the big screen... albeit not until the new year.

The fortunate few able to catch the world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival however, will see Michael Sheen and Frank Langella reprise their roles as David Frost and Richard Nixon in a film that focuses on a series of four interviews conducted in 1977.

Set three years after Nixon became the only president in the history of the United States to resign, Sheen's Frost stumps up the dollars to secure an exclusive interview with Tricky Dick.

As the playboy chatshow host's abilities as a political interviewer are doubted by the press corps on both sides of the Atlantic, Nixon and his inner circle plot a comeback at Frost's expense.

Frost, his career, reputation and future on the line, has other ideas, pledging to give Nixon the trial he never had over the Watergate scandal.

Who's in it?

Beautiful Mind helmsman Ron Howard only agreed to take up directorial duties if both Langella and Sheen were cast in the roles they made their own in the West End and Broadway.

It's easy to see why – Langella has Nixon's supremely confident but weird mannerisms down perfectly, while Sheen once again provides a timely reminder of his forte of real-life portrayals.

Strong support is offered from Matthew Macfayden as Frost's LWT producer, while Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt are convincing as the behind-the-scenes team putting their reputations on the line along with Frost.

As an example...

"Why would I want to talk to David Frost?" - Richard Nixon
"I got half a million dollars." - Swifty Lazar
"Really? [Pause] Any chance of $550,000?" - Nixon

"Are you really saying the president can do something illegal?" - David Frost
"I'm saying that when the president does it, it's not illegal." - Nixon

Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars

Frost/Nixon will be the film that confirms Peter Morgan's acceptance into the Academy following his nomination for The Queen two years ago.

Both Langella and Sheen are worthy nominees, although the former is a more likely winner after already being honoured with a Tony for his Nixon portrayal.

Oscar-winner Howard is equally liable to be rewarded for his tight relocation of the stage play to the big screen, while the film itself is good enough to justify a best picture nod of its own.

What the others say

"As well as creeping impatience, there is a weird sense of deja vu watching the talky, inert drama... Now, once again, Sheen plays a media-savvy and weirdly depthless figure facing off against a shrewd, but wounded head of state." – Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian

So is it any good?

Frost/Nixon has erroneously been portrayed as a thinking-man's Rocky, as in real life Frost had more political standing than Howard gives him credit for, while Nixon was undoubtedly on the way down.

When underdog falsehoods are put aside; the battle of wits that unfolds between the reporter with a reputation to prove and the commander in chief with a legacy to preserve feels like an epic war movie, each combatant trying to find a chink in their adversaries' armour.

The tension that builds ahead of each interview, culminating in the final dialogue on Watergate, is palpable, driven by the stakes that existed for each man.

For Frost the situation is desperate; much of the multi-million dollar expense for getting Nixon into the interviewee's chair coming from his own pockets, while his chatshows in London and Australia are axed as his credentials come under attack in Washington.

And for Nixon, the interviews represent the chance to justify his actions that brought shame upon the White House, as well as championing his record in Vietnam, China and Russia.

The film's main strength is evident here: the leads performances were enough to base a play around and the same can be said in the film.

Sheen is a bright and breezy Frost, whose light-heartedness belies a man with the world (and his agent) on his shoulders.

Despite Sheen's likeability in a role distinct enough from his two performances as Tony Blair under previous Morgan-written productions, Langella is the dominant force, even when portraying a Nixon broken by Frost and the confession he extracts.

Nixon died in 1994, making Sir David Frost the only of the film's centrals to be present at tonight's premiere, but you feel he would have little to fault in Langella's portrayal, which shows the president to be at the same time supremely confident, divisive, beloved, vulnerable and, ultimately, penitent.

There are problems with the transition from the stage to the multiplex however; the documentary format interviews feel tacked on, while the montage section that precludes the final interview cheapens the experience.

But the faults and liberties taken with Frost's career cannot take away from what is, in October, easily one of the best films of the year.

Not a bad achievement for a film that is ostensibly a two-hour recreation of a 30-year-old series of interviews.

8.5/10

Matthew Champion

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