FROST/NIXON (2008) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Ron Howard
D: Ron Howard
Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon,
Sam Rockwell, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt,
Toby Jones, Rebecca Hall, Patty McCormack
Michael Sheen appears to be carving out a small niche for himself playing real-life characters, supposed lightweights who pick just the right moment to overachieve. In "The Queen", he played Tony Blair to Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth. Here he's television personality David Frost, going up against Frank Langella's Richard Nixon. Once again, it's the performance opposite Sheen that got most of the critical attention, and once again, it's Sheen's self-effacing turn as the would-be foil that gives the piece balance and makes it work. Playing Nixon is a little like playing Hitler. You can't get to the man without going through the stereotype. Overdo the stereotype and the man gets lost. Langella nails Nixon's shrewdness and self-loathing, but the real Nixon also had an awkward charm that's missing here. The movie, like the play it's based on, recreates a series of televised interviews Frost conducted with Nixon a few years after Nixon left office. Nixon was paid $600,000 to participate, and hoped to use the exposure to rehabilitate his shattered public image. Frost's motives were just as mercenary: a potential ratings gold mine, and a personal ticket to greater glory on TV. And political partisans on all sides saw it as the closest thing to a trial the disgraced but savvy Nixon would ever get. Ron Howard does his usual workmanlike job with all this, playing up the hype on both sides in the manner of the hoopla surrounding a championship prizefight. The verdict: Frost (and Sheen) on a TKO.
