Synopsis:
A
dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate
television interviews between British talk-show
host David Frost and former president Richard
Nixon.
The Freak's
Rating: A- : Politics was never a topic
my family discussed. I follow politics
more now than ever before. Near the
beginning of my marriage, I discovered two
things politically. My father is a
hardcore Democrat. My father in law is a
hardcore Republican. Both men invest
plenty of their time following politics and both
are so entrenched in their red/blue camps that
they rarely listen to the other side of things.
Having both men on opposite sides has been very
interesting in my life, leading me to question
both on their logic of remaining loyal to one
party's set of beliefs, each side being quite
hypocritical on a number of issues. Nixon
was always interesting to me, one party saying
he did many good things, one calling him a
crook. I had heard of the Frost / Nixon
tapes, but never seen one, so it was fascinating
to me to see a film based upon them.
Frank
Langella has been doing the broadway performance
of Richard Nixon in the Frost / Nixon play for
quite some time now. He has perfected
Nixon and the Academy will most likely award the
oscar to him for it. He sets the tone of
the film and brilliantly portrays all the self
confidence and power the former President had.
Nearly as powerful is Michael Sheen's
performance as David Frost. Sheen quivers
with fear when verbally assaulted and puts off
an incredible vibe of arrogance, causing the
filmgoer to question who to root for on a number
of occasions.
Ron
Howard should be recognized for his ability to
take a set of political interviews conducted so
many years ago and turn them into a spellbinding
tale. Though I doubt Howard will be
awarded for direction of a film adapted from a
Broadway play, stranger things have happened at
the Oscars. The score of the film, tight
closeups and pacing keeps the audience suspended
on every word the lead characters say in the
interviews. Casting is also nicely done
here, adding Kevin Bacon, Sam Rockwell and
Oliver Platt as supporting actors who perfectly
play their roles.
Frost
/ Nixon is one of many films out right now that
are nominated for Best Picture. It earns
it, having wonderful costume/set design,
brilliant acting and captivating direction.
Political buffs on the right side of the isle
will no doubt blast the film for inaccuracies on
things they cannot prove to be so. Buffs
on the left side will claim absolute truth on
the same issues, again not able to be proven.
The film sets a grand stage for one of the most
heated and controversial interviews on American
television ever recorded and is incredibly
entertaining to the last second.
Brian's Rating: C+
: I have never really figured out how to be
interested in political movies, and this one
proves to be no exception for me. I will say
that the actor who portrayed Nixon did an
incredible job. I don't really follow the
Oscar's but I would be surprised if he did not
at least get nominated.
I only know the history of Watergate, I am too
young to have lived through it and hence never
really grasped what it meant for the country. I
had also never heard of these interviews that
the film portrays, so in that sense of the
matter the movie was informative.
I have no idea what reality was, but I do know
what I wanted to see. I wanted to see a couple
of intellectual adversaries going at it head to
head. I was not really looking for a bad guy,
but I was hoping that both parties would have
been portrayed in a respectful opposition to
each other with competing beliefs and motives.
That is not what I got out of this.
Instead, the film sets up Frost as the
protagonist underdog that is larger than life.
He is hopelessly outmatched by the vastly more
experienced Nixon and then comes through in the
end in a "Rocky-like" moment. Nixon is
portrayed as the bad guy, as a racist, and as a
money hungry selfish individucal (sort of like
Pete Rose). Now maybe all of that is true.
Maybe Nixon was a racist. Maybe he was money
hungry (after all, he was a politician). Maybe
he was a real jerk to know personally. I do
know that it did not cause me to respect him as
an adversary in the interviews. Its hard to
respect a broken down, racist, self serving
crook. I wanted to see a little more level
portrayal of Nixon to leave the audience to draw
their own conclusions about his character. I
did not like the bad guy motif being shoved down
my throat.
I think for that reason I lost interest. Even
if historically accurate, it made me no longer
really care for the competition of the
interview. It was evident that Frost was going
to "win" out just by the way it was setup in the
writing, so therefore I lost interest in the
story line.
There is a lot to appreciate in the movie with
the acting for Nixon, but other than that I did
not think this movie was anything very special.
It does get a "C+" rather than a C because I
realize that this is right up some people's
ally, and to those people I would recommend it.
click here to review
it yourself!
