Split seconds before cameras roll on a 1977 televised struggle, disgraced former President Richard Nixon asks his interviewer, “Do any fornicating last night?”
His disarming comments and mind games rattle the British TV personality David Frost — until a drunk, slurring Nixon rants to Frost in a charged late-night call just before their last interview.
Four out of five stars
» Starring: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell
» Rated R for some language
» Running time: 122 mins.
“I shall be your fiercest adversary,” he says. “I shall come at you with everything I got. Because the limelight can only shine on one of us.”
During the final interview in a series of four, Frost leads Nixon to confess he did cover up Watergate.
The problem is that’s not exactly what happened in real life. But while the truth doesn’t give the American people disgusted by the government everything they want, Ron Howard’s docudrama “Frost/Nixon” does.
Peter Morgan adapted his Broadway play for the big screen. Reprising their roles from Morgan’s stage play are the superb Frank Langella, who won a Tony for his portrayal of Nixon, and Michael Sheen, who inhabited the part of Frost onstage in London and New York. You’ll recognize him as Tony Blair from Morgan’s “The Queen.”
Langella and Sheen prove in their face-offs talking heads can be riveting, especially when set among politics, checkbook journalism and show business converging.
As journalist James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell) puts it in the film, the interviews are the trial Richard Nixon never had.
Added to the tension is the fact that playboy Frost is paying out of pocket for the interviews and his research team considers him a joke.
