Film Review: Frost/Nixon

Following his portrayals of Kenneth Williams and Tony Blair, Michael Sheen plays another real life figure in David Frost (before returning next year to play Brian Clough in the screen adaptation of David Peace's The Damned Utd). There's little in the way of physical likeness but that does not deter from the performance. The same can be said of Frank Langella's Nixon.

The film starts with a montage of news footage of the Watergate scandal and Nixon's eventual resignation. Frost is presented as a chat show host working in Australia. Despite being the presenter of Through The Keyhole, history has been kind to Frost in terms of the respect he has in the UK. In Frost/Nixon he is presented as a more successful Alan Partridge with an interest in celebrity, fame and money rather than political machinations of the Watergate scandal. It's said that he hadn't even voted in his life.

The charming yet buffoon-like Frost set about setting up an interview with Nixon when he learns of the number of viewers who watched Nixon's resignation speech. As a disgraced president Nixon has been reduced to telling anecdotes of his time as presidents and abhors questions regarding Watergate. He agrees to a series of interviews with Frost, commanding a large fee. Frost has trouble raising the money throughout as all the major US networks are uninterested in paying a large sum of money for an English chat show host interviewing the former US president.

The defining moment of the 1960 Presidential Election is often said to be the televised debate between Nixon and John F Kennedy where Nixon, who had recently been ill, sweated and looked unhealthy and uncomfortable in contrast to the healthy and good looking Kennedy. Therefore, it's a surprise to see the relative ease with which Nixon conducts himself and controls Frost for much of the interviews. It's not until the a few days before the final interview that Frost channels his energies into researching Watergate himself.

This final act leads to the film playing out like Rocky with Frost as the plucky underdog who overcomes his own shortcomings for a montage that will ultimately lead to a performance against the heavyweight champion. It forms a convenient narrative arc but it's hard to believe that Frost could have been so buffoonish and ignorant until the final day's interview. As a result, it seems a slightly romanticised version of events.

The film is to be admired for making a compelling drama out of what is essentially a series of interviews, and the pursuit of those interviews. The film would never work without two excellent central performances from Sheen and Langella, and credit must also go to the supporting cast of Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell and an underused Toby Jones.