FROST/NIXON (2008)

FROST/NIXON, based on the play by Peter Morgan and directed on film by Ron "Opie" Howard, dramatizes the historic David Frost-Richard Nixon TV interviews of 1977. At heart, it’s a David-Goliath tale with Frost as the modern-day David. A popular TV personality abroad who craved success in America, Frost got the big idea to conduct a paid interview with the disgraced president. Nixon agreed to do it, thinking the exposure would boost both his image and bank account. The interviews are dramatized as boxing rounds, with Nixon scoring point after point with his self-serving answers and diatribe-like jabs. But in the final interview, David manages to sling a fatal rock in the form of a query about the Watergate cover-up. Flummoxed, Nixon breaks down and does a pseudo-mea culpa, admitting to letting down the American people and "probably" having broken the law. The hour or so leading up to that dramatic moment is both intense and entertaining. Michael Sheen is dynamic as the fiercely driven Frost who rose above his “just an entertainer” status to ferret out a confession and apology that no accredited journalist had been able to extract. As Nixon, Frank Langella, who had done the role on stage, shows us the disgraced President's multiple sides brilliantly. And all the supporting actors are equally fine, including Kevin Bacon as Nixon's loyal aide, Sam Rockwell as one of Frost's researchers (and conscience), and in a riveting cameo, Patty McCormick as ghostly Pat Nixon. (Movie trivia: Aging movie lovers may remember Ms. McCormick as the evil 10-year old Rhonda Penmark in the 1956 shocker, THE BAD SEED.)