Frost/Nixon
(Ron Howard)
Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones.
Running time: 122 minutes. (PG)
It was the showdown of 1977. David Frost, the ‘lightweight’ chatshow host getting the first interview with Richard Nixon, who never broke his silence on Watergate. “He’ll be a big wet kiss,” Nixon was told. It became David versus Goliath. Tricky Dicky delved deep into his box of tricks. But he didn’t see the sling shot coming.
Ron Howard takes Peter Morgan’s West End production and turns it into a slick, entertaining piece of popcorn – a battle of impersonating wills. Michael Sheen adds 44%. He gets Frost’s voice down pat, but he’s all external, projecting an irksome goofyness. Every fluctuating thought is worn broadly on his face. Langella’s Nixon is a different animal. His jowls waggle like a St Bernard. His eyebrows could bat Frost across the room. His voice booms with wounded pride. Langella takes Nixon the monster and finds an unlikely seam of humanity in the man – a towering hubris. When his defence cracks, his spirit breaks and he becomes an old man. Langella does it in the merest of glances, without a word said. The moment is edge-of-the-seat electric. Howard overcomes a central problem: how to make an interview dramatically and cinematically interesting. The real interview was a volley of interminable detail. He strips it down and focuses on the politics and battle of wills behind the scenes. Frost/Nixon is politics as pugilistic spectacle. History wrapped in Hollywood gloss. Does it speak of the current times? Only if you desperately want it to.
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