Frost / Nixon Review

Based on the famous play which was based on the actual interviews, and written by Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon is and feels like an adapted play. Very talky and also extremely static, the film, directed by Ron Howard, still manages to get the heart racing.

Having never seen the play, or the interviews, I went into the cinema with only knowledge of what David Frost managed to achieve and his reputation, which was built on the back of the the Nixon interviews. I therefore found the film revealing and intriging in equal measure. David Frost, played admirably by Michael Sheen, isn't the interview king I thought he was. And Richard Nixon is never portrayed as the villain I'd always seen him as.

The film benefits massively for the great supporting cast including Sam Rockwell, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Kevin Bacon, Toby Jones and Matthew Macfadyen. In fact there isn't a poor performance amongst them. But when the lights go on, the cameras start rolling, this is Frank Langella's film. Nominated for an Oscar, Langella imbues Nixon with the statesmenlike quality you'd expect from a former leader of the worlds greatest nation. But there is also humility, vulnerability and a desire to not be painted as a villain. Unlike say Bush, who seems only a fool, even in Oliver Stone's strong W, Nixon is an intelligent poloitical warrior, who overstepped the mark. Langella turns him into a ferocious opponent, one who Frost underestimates, even up to and including his eventual confession.

When the climax and resolution finally arrives, it's Langella's performance who demands our empathy. The feeling you get, upon his confession, isn't so much of a man who has completely and absolutely abused the power, but a man who carried the weight of the greatest nation in the world on his shoulders, and did what he believed was the correct way to act.

Peter Morgan's greatest achievement in the script, and no doubt the play, was to humanize the only President to resign from office. When I went into the film I had expected to see a savvy, cunning and masterful interview extract something the American government never seemed inclined to approach, instead, we saw the truth of a man, who had the most difficult job in the world, and I learnt, that Nixon, and ever other president to have served are only human, just like everybody else and is therefore vulnerable and fallible like the rest of us.

A triumph over performance and writing, Peter Morgan is probably one of the finest screenwriters working today, and with a cast including Langella and Sheen this film is entertaining and engrossing.