Frost/Nixon (2008): C

As with The Queen,
screenwriter Peter Morgan once again pits a Michael Sheen underdog against a
titanic adversary in Frost/Nixon,
Sheen in this case embodying playboy cream puff British talk-show host David
Frost, and his nemesis being Tricky Dick (Frank Langella), whom Frost famously
interviewed over several months in 1977. Adapting his own play, Morgan posits
this showdown as David vs. Goliath, and the two as similar figurative boxers
fighting for credibility, respect, and a return to the limelight, a dynamic
clearly established by the numerous characters who bluntly articulate these
very points. In terms of condescending narrative handholding, Frost/Nixon has no 2008 rival, as
Morgan’s script and Ron Howard’s direction maniacally avoid anything like
subtext or visual storytelling, their tale’s every argument made painfully
plain by dialogue – much of it coming from framing-device, faux-documentary
hindsight interviews with the main players – that demonstrates a devotion to
telling rather than showing. This modus operandi is so zealously applied that
one soon feels borderline insulted by the general lack of respect for audience
intelligence, a feeling that culminates during the momentous close-up of Nixon
immediately after he admits to having made presidential mistakes and let down
the American public.

It’s a moment that finds Langella silently expressing
layered emotions, only to then be immediately followed by anti-Nixon author
James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell) overtly describing said emotions in detail
before Howard cuts back to Nixon’s
countenance just so we can again see what Rockwell just told us we should.
Langella’s performance is bone-deep and compelling but the film’s conception of
the disgraced commander-in-chief only amounts to a sketchy variation of that proffered
by Nixon, and its depiction of Frost
stresses his superficiality not because it’s necessarily accurate but because
it better serves the little guy-big guy conflict. Even given the plot’s talky,
static nature, Howard awkwardly aims for bigness via self-conscious zooms,
camera pans, and narrative beats better suited for one of his tentpole efforts.
The gracelessness of his direction, however, is in keeping with Frost/Nixon’s simplistic obviousness,
which goes hand-in-hand with its ill-defined point-of-view, a fact most
strikingly epitomized by a final close-up that strains for the emotional
complexity of the Frost interviews’ climax but – aside from granting Nixon
great empathy – merely highlights how little of note Howard and Morgan have to
say about their subject.