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Frost/Nixon is a thoroughly engrossing battle of wits, a film that could've easily been a dry and caricatured re-staging of David Frost's interview with President Richard Nixon, yet manages to enter the thriller realm, and admirably so. Ron Howard's direction, Peter Morgan's screenplay, and the performances given by Frank Langella and Michael Sheen turn an entirely dialogue-based film into a nail-biting experience that depicts the interview which concluded with Nixon's final admission of guilt for the illegal acts he committed during his administration. The movie effectively maintains the audience engaged by slightly fictionalizing some details, but without straying too far from the facts.
I was shocked by the fact that this film has a 2-hour running time; the interview scenes make Frost/Nixon such an intense experience that they make the time pass very quickly. What's interesting is that the way the tone of the interviews unfolds and ends up shifting is quite conventional: initially, Nixon (Langella) undoubtedly has the upper hand, going on long, eloquent rants, preventing the seemingly helpless Frost (Sheen) from digging into the former President and asking him questions that would make him sweat. In fact, Howard's film suggests that Nixon accepted doing the interview because he thought that Frost was not journalistically savvy enough to break him - prior to the interview, Nixon's advisor Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon) reassures the former president that "there's no catch" to the interview and that "it'll be a big, wet kiss," and later even tells him that "Frost is not in [Nixon's] intellectual class," and it certainly seems that way until the final day of interviewing, when the tables are turned. Some may be skeptical of Frost's sudden spurt of assertiveness and his ability to finally get Nixon to sweat and ultimately give in to admitting that he made some monumental mistakes, but in its slight fictionalizing, the film tries to come up with an explanation for said transformation on the journalist's part. Before that final day of the interview, there is a scene in which a drunk Nixon calls Frost late at night and, predictably, reveals more than he would have in a sober state. This prompts Frost to do some research that ultimately materializes into new evidence against the former president. Right before cameras start rolling for the final interview, Frost mentions the late-night call, which a disoriented Nixon seems not to recall, thus initiating the turbulent climax to this enthralling on-screen duel.
Obviously, the phone call scene IS the film's turning point, and some may have qualms as to whether or not this is going too far in terms of fictionalization, but the thing is that when a movie that is chronicling a historic event doesn't have all of the puzzle pieces, the filmmakers HAVE to use their imagination to fill in the gaps, and I think they do it decently here. The phone call scene isn't necessarily reflective of what actually happened, nor it is necessarily the most effective way to justify Frost's ability to suddenly get the upper hand, but I still give Howard and Morgan credit for inventiveness that doesn't stretch the lines of credulity. I will point out, though, that all the prefacing during the first half hour or so of the film, which introduces us to Frost the TV personality and depicts the logistics of arranging the interview, is certainly necessary but goes on longer than it should. A lighthearted moment involving Oliver Platt's character's rendition of Nixon is appreciated in terms of amusement but does little to further the plot and seems misplaced in a film like this. These initial scenes aren't poorly crafted, but it just seems like they more than delay the supremely entertaining interview scenes, which are certainly the meat of the film. In addition, there's a scene later in the film in which Nixon is playing the piano and wife Pat enters the room to ask how the interviews are going, and when she is told they are going well, she responds "That is so gratifying," and not only does this moment feel unnecessary and out of place in the film, but it is also delivered unconvincingly by the actress playing Mrs. Nixon.
One of the reasons why, as I said, the prefacing about Frost as a person isn't all that necessary is because Michael Sheen does a good enough job at portraying Frost's breezy, diligent personality that we don't really need all of those other details. The smiling fierceness that Sheen brings to Frost is more than enough to make us believe his ability to finally get Nixon to break (however, I was more impressed with Sheen's performance two years ago in The Queen, a very authentic impersonation of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair). For all of Sheen's good work, though, this is Langella's film. The veteran actor has every facial expression, every aspect of the voice, every nervous tick down, and is amazingly convincing as Nixon. Even more incredibly, towards the end of the film, Langella succeeds in getting us to sympathize with the character, despite our awareness of all the wrongdoing committed by the actual man. Langella is a lock for an Oscar nomination.
Ron Howard chooses to go for a sort-of documentary approach by having "confessionals" in which the film's supporting characters give their take on what is happening, as a way to give us an idea of what the secondary figures in the duel between Frost and Nixon were thinking - while this doesn't really help the film much in terms of giving it an authentic documentary-style look, it does help with keeping the minor characters in the film from being mere flies on the wall with no development whatsoever as real people. Still, the film's focus remains on the two title characters, and because of that, Frost/Nixon largely succeeds in portraying a riveting war of words.
7/10
