DHP Review: Frost/Nixon
Posted by Dirty Harry on Friday, December 12th, 2008
Frost/Nixon is a full on respectable, accomplished and intelligent retelling of the now famous series of interviews English television personality David Frost conducted with disgraced former President Nixon in 1977, just a few years after Nixon’s resignation. No one can argue a successful stageplay hasn’t been transformed into a beautifully shot narrative with two memorable performances by Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost. The film holds your attention and reeks of competence from beginning to end.
All that’s missing is a point.Since 1976’s All The President’s Men Nixon’s become a genre all his own. Take a look. So what exactly is the point of yet another Nixon Was An Evil Weird Cheap Racist picture? What our thirty-seventh president really needs is an artist with the artistry to Downfall the man. After all, you don’t win two presidential elections and force John F. Kennedy to steal his if all you are is a stooped-over gargoyle crippled with paranoia. Unfortunately, there’s nothing over Frost/Nixon’s 122 minute runtime that adds a thing to the bloated Nixon Genre.
Not that the story isn’t an interesting and sometimes fascinating one. Director Ron Howard, working from Peter Morgan’s, script based on his own play, sets the confrontation up as a boxing match between a wily champ whose experience has taught him all the tricks and a brash young contender who has no idea what a punch from the real deal feels like.
Still shy of forty, Frost lives an Austin Powerish life jetting off to do his various and silly television shows, partying with celebrities, and shagging stewardesses in the good old days before they became flight attendants. But his career is also on the wane and in the elusive and darkly fascinating Nixon, Frost sees not only a shot at big ratings but a return to where success in the entertainment business really means something: Hollywood.
For his part, Nixon wants his reputation back, wants to make his case and remind the American people that he was more than just the “victim” of a two-bit burglary. In David Frost, Nixon, for good reasons, sees easy pickings; an unserious goofball with no idea what he’s up against offering a ton of money and hours of television.
The interviews are filmed in two hour segments over a series of days. In keeping with the boxing metaphor, Howard presents them as rounds with Frost getting his clock cleaned in most of the early ones. In his corner are two very unhappy men, Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt), a former network guy, and James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell), a Nixon-loathing researcher. Both are badly in need of a “win” if they’re to avoid professional humiliation.
A “win” is defined as “getting” Nixon. In their opinion, Ford’s pardon was not the end of a long national nightmare, but instead getnix-interruptus. They don’t want to understand their subject and they don’t want others to understand him, either. They want his head on a pole and all the career benefits that will come with that victory.
Besides being a pointless exercise in baby boomer masturbation, the narrative has its share of problems. Throughout the film a number of the characters pop up in interview segments to move and explain the plot. Maybe the idea is in keeping with the boxing metaphor with between-round analysis, but characters looking into a camera in order to explain what we just watched and their own motivations in anything other than a documentary is as artificial as you can get.
Early in the film Frost picks up and enters into a relationship with a young woman (Caroline Cushing) he meets on a flight to Los Angeles where he’s to meet Nixon for the first time. Other than her being an exposition excuse for Frost to pour out his anxieties, the relationship adds nothing, either to the plot or in examining the Frost character. The producers might have saved Cushing’s salary by simply having Frost speak into the camera like everyone else.
The politics of the film are decidedly left wing and the whole exercise reeks of liberal wish fulfillment. For much of the film Frost is unable to “get” Nixon and this is only presented as a lack of seriousness and preparation on his part, as opposed to a lack of argument. This is most apparent during the “round” involving Vietnam.
Nixon inherited a messy war started by JFK and bungled by his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson. You may not want to go as far as calling it a victory, but Nixon did manage to do in Vietnam better than we did in Korea. His relentless bombing campaign, including Cambodia, brought peace between the North and South, and more importantly, a removal of most of our military personnel.
Hollywood (and the liberal media) take great pains to avoid this chapter of our history and Frost/Nixon is no different. The fall of Saigon and the Holocaust in Cambodia wouldn’t have happened had the Democrats not won control of Congress in 1976 1974 pledging to pull financial support from our allies in South Vietnam. Emboldened by the American left, the North invaded and 3 million innocent people were murdered and/or “re-educated.”
These are facts, but the film will have none of it and the Nixon character’s protestations to the contrary, those who aren’t aware of them will be left with the impression that there never was a peace agreement, our troops never were removed, and the Holocaust in Cambodia was not a direct result of the Left abandoning our allies, but rather the bombing of Cambodia, the act which brought about peace in the first place.
The film’s biggest flaw, however, is a deus ex machina involving Sam Rockwell’s character that’s telegraphed so obviously and early it takes all the juice out of the story before it really begins. As Howard proved with the marvelous Apollo 13 he’s more than able to tell a suspenseful story even though how it ends is already well known. The fun is watching how success is achieved and Nixon/Frost practically puts this up in neon deflating its own purpose.
Frost/Nixon rates as an impressive television movie, but as a feature it lacks a point, any kind of real intellectual curiosity, and, most of all, an ambition to do more than win awards. There’s a great Nixon film to be made about this corrupt but fascinating man, but a couple of terrific lead performances won’t help anyone remember this one for very long.
Filed in Movie Reviews |
gmkon 12 Dec 2008 at 9:53 am 1If Gen X does nothing else it is going to hang the truth about Vietnam around the correct necks. You can’t subvert the truth when you’re dead, and they will die before we do.
Kensingtonon 12 Dec 2008 at 9:54 am 2The “point” is simple: Ron Howard and his producers want to inspire some journalist today to do the same thing to George W. Bush. There’s nothing more to it. It’s just BDS.
Mark Hemingway illustrated this over at The Corner last week.
Nickolas Dilmoreon 12 Dec 2008 at 10:11 am 3Where have all of the brave filmmakers gone? By brave, I don’t mean the ones who make political masturbation movies that will earn them empty accolades and make no money, but brave in examining a subject and maybe, just maybe showing a point of view, a truth, a fact, that isn’t popular with the in-crowd, that won’t win a pat-on-the-back from leftist fellow travelers.
A brave filmmaker would have the balls to do an honest portrayal of Nixon, show that he secured South Vietnam and that we hadn’t lost at that point.
A brave filmmaker would craft a biopic of W without an axe to grind– to actually try to find the truth in the man, even if it *gasp!* shows him in a decent light.
A brave filmmaker wouldn’t romanticize Che, but show the innocents he murdered, and the results of his “revolutions.”
A brave filmmaker would create a movie that takes all of the leftist ideas and fantasies and shows us where they all actually lead.
I promise, if I ever win the Powerball (not that I actually play) I will start a film company and make those kinds of film.
Billon 12 Dec 2008 at 10:31 am 4I think you mean Johnson was JFK’s successor, not his predecessor.
Carolynon 12 Dec 2008 at 10:37 am 5Bill - I think DH means Johnson was NIXON’s predecessor. Which Johnson was.
hurfon 12 Dec 2008 at 10:45 am 6“The fall of Saigon and the Holocaust in Cambodia wouldn’t have happened had the Democrats not won control of Congress in 1976 pledging to pull financial support from our allies in South Vietnam. Emboldened by the American left, the North invaded and 3 million innocent people were murdered and/or ‘re-educated.’”
This is ahistorical nonsense. Nixon and his cronies eventually admitted in secret that the war was lost, and cynically utilized its bloodshed to help their boss (e.g. Kissinger illegally sabotaging a peace deal in the runup to ‘68 and getting countless American soldiers killed). The only reason the Khmer Rouge took power and began their catastrophic slaughter is because Nixon and Kissinger’s indiscriminate bombing campaign (the one that killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodian peasants whom you don’t seem to care about) destabilized the existing government. And that’s before we get into the innocent blood on their hands from Chile, Indonesia…
The last bit is also a mendacious lie - the cutting-off of financial support from South Vietnam was supported by a large majority of the American people and such notable pinkos as Scoop Jackson and Barry Goldwater. But those facts conflict with your “liberals stabbed us in the back!” myth, right?
Chris E.on 12 Dec 2008 at 11:22 am 7So Nixon bombs the commies in Cambodia… and that was the reason commies took over Cambodia.
It must be nice to be a liberal, not having to deal with that whole logic baggage all the time.
Plissken79on 12 Dec 2008 at 11:25 am 8Hurf, Big Brother #1, aka Pol Pot, aka Saloth Sar, claimed as a student in France in the mid-1950s that when he and his Cambodian Communist colleagues took power, as much as half the population of the country would have to die to create a Communist Cambodia, and this was long before any bombs fell on Cambodia.
In addition, the bombing was a direct result of the Viet Cong’s invasion of Cambodia in order to subvert the government of South Vietnam, so if you want to blame anyone for the deaths of Cambodians in the bombings (and your “hundreds of thousands” figure is pulled out of the air, Cambodia in 1970 had a population of about 4 million, and about 2 million in 1979 after the bloody reign of the Khmer Communists was over) then blame the Vietnamese Communists for invading Cambodia in the first place.
So if there is anyone spreading ahistorical nonsense it is yourself.
Still, the person most responsbile for the fall of South Vietnam was JFK. His amazingly foolish decision to approve the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963 robbed South Vietam of the political stability it needed to fight the war effectively against the Communist North on its own
The Ugly Americanon 12 Dec 2008 at 11:27 am 9I still say Langella sounds like Sean Connery w/o the Scottish accent.
Brianon 12 Dec 2008 at 11:29 am 10hurf: The cutting off of financial support from South Vietnam by the Democrats is directly responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Is that strong enough for you? The hatred of Richard Nixon by the left originating in his proving that Alger Hiss was a communist spy for the Soviets blinded them to caring one whit about what the effects would be of their actions. The South Vietnamese defeated the 1972 Easter Offensive mostly on their own, with US air power playing a major role but only a limited ground role by the US. When the Dems took over in 1974 (not 1976, DH) they totally cut off direct US military aid, and even refused to sell the South Vietnamese weapons or ammunition, thus dooming any chances they had to succeed against the 1975 invasion. Go to any Vietnamese community in Orange County and ask them who’s right about this.
Jimon 12 Dec 2008 at 11:34 am 11Due to the reforms instituted by General Creighton Abrams, it took all all out-invasion by an aggressive power (after American support was cut off), not an internal insurrection, for South Vietnam to fall to the Communists.
Lewis Sorley’s “A Better War” provides good details on this.
whiskeyon 12 Dec 2008 at 11:42 am 12Hurf — there are many things to dislike about Richard Nixon: his wage-price controls, his support of Affirmative Action, his creation of the EPA, his liberalism in general, but Vietnam, and his process of Vietnamization, was not one of them.
What would you have done at the time? Simply surrender to the North Vietnamese so they could start the killing early?
Pol Pot was a creature of the North Vietnamese, until he turned on them, and went with the Chinese as the Vietnamese and Chinese split after victory over South Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos. Thailand was saved only by the infighting of the Vietnamese and Chinese.
Ironically the Liberal’s tin God, Obama is so much like Nixon. Corrupt. Venal. A cauldron of icky, nasty, corrupt, brutal, and weird associates. Ugly things in his past (is he a Muslim? Secretly or not so secretly sympathetic to Muslims? Anti-Semitic like Nixon? — YES. Filled with racial hatred? — YES. Climbing and status-obsessed and tricky-deviously stupid? — YES.)
We have our own generation’s Nixon. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.
Billon 12 Dec 2008 at 11:55 am 13Not to hijack the thread, but I just saw on Yahoo where Van Johnson died at age 92.
HeartbreakRidgeon 12 Dec 2008 at 12:31 pm 14Everytime I look at that poster I think “Why is John Edwards in a movie?”
Nate Winchesteron 12 Dec 2008 at 12:44 pm 15Fred Schwarz points out that the movie is just so much historical revisionism.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmRjNWU0YTliMGJmZWY4OTY1ZjUwMzRmNDViOTY1Zjg=
Money quote:
I wonder how many more will now have incorrect knowledge about this “event” through the movie.
Ginaon 12 Dec 2008 at 12:52 pm 16Bill — aww, another one bites the dust. I always hate to lose another classic movie star. Always liked Van Johnson, too. Maybe I’ll watch “Brigadoon” in his honor.
Stephanieon 12 Dec 2008 at 1:03 pm 17Look if we ignore the Hurf maybe it will go away. Anyone who can be as disingenuous about history is either completely ignorant or doesn’t like the truth.
Anyway this looks like another issue of BDS. Pure and simple. Nixon was nothing like the way he was portrayed. No one will ever get it right because only idiot leftwing brain dead zombie flesh eaters make movies about him. The rest of us hope our 37th President rests in peace.
The Almighty Turtleon 12 Dec 2008 at 2:32 pm 18Alright, since somebody has to do this thoroughly….
Hurf:
“Nixon and his cronies eventually admitted in secret that the war was lost”
Hardly. They admitted that, given public issues, IT COULD NOT BE WON. Which is different. Why? Because winning would have required going for the throat and destroying Ho Chi Mihn and Giap in the North, which the public could not tolerate. So they believed our best bet was to turn the reins over to ARVN and destroy the VC, grind the NVA down, and batter the North to the peace table. All of which eventually happened.
“e.g. Kissinger illegally sabotaging a peace deal in the runup to ‘68 and getting countless American soldiers killed)”
Hardly. Kissinger merely killed off a dying dog not wanting to admit it was dying. Why? Because Hanoi was sabatoging the peace deal daily and very blatently by violating ceasefires, crossing the DMZ, not following Geneva, and generally being scum who would not honor the agreements they made. So Kissinger pretty much cut the thing short in light of North Vietnamese treachery.
The Almighty Turtleon 12 Dec 2008 at 2:41 pm 19“). The only reason the Khmer Rouge took power and began their catastrophic slaughter is because Nixon and Kissinger’s indiscriminate bombing campaig”
No no no no NO. The simple fact is that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were getting support from the NVA and China for years by the time we started bombing, and they had already wrested control over most of the country from the weak and corrupt regime. If anything, the carpet bombing probably was the best way to preserve a chance of KEEPING him out of power, and certainly slowed him down.
“destabilized the existing government”
The bombing didn’t destabilize anything that hadn’t already been by the Communist presence in the border regions, the Civil War, and the infighting within the regime itself to try to play top dog even as the Khmer Rouge inched closer to Phnom Pehn.
“And that’s before we get into the innocent blood on their hands from Chile, Indonesia…”
Welcome to Cold War politics and diplomacy! The sad fact is that, for over 200 years, we have had to support tyrants and murdering bastages who deserve only to be shot. Why? Because while said rats may be SOBs, they are “our SOBs”, and their removal often leads to a power vaccum that our enemies (be they Germany, the USSR, or China) could step into. There are no easy choices half the time, and we are lucky when we can pressure “our SOBs” to become Democratic after a period of time (South Korea, Taiwan), but in order to do that, they still have to be STANDING until that happens. Am I conding everything he did? No. But the fact is that, during the Cold War, there were no easy choices, and sometimes you have to make a deal with the devil to restrain a greater and more terrible one.
The Almighty Turtleon 12 Dec 2008 at 2:44 pm 20“The last bit is also a mendacious lie - the cutting-off of financial support from South Vietnam was supported by a large majority of the American people and such notable pinkos as Scoop Jackson and Barry Goldwater. But those facts conflict with your “liberals stabbed us in the back!” myth, right?”
So, you are attacking his argument on the basis that the cut-off was popular. You make a point, but miss a larger one: the mere fact that something is popular does NOT mean that it is either the right or correct choice (for you, check the fact that most of the country voted for Bush in 2004. For the rest of us, Gore and Obama).
And, crucially, you cannot refute the centerfugal point of that talking point: that the cutoff led to slaughter.
And that is more telling than anything.
newmanon 12 Dec 2008 at 3:17 pm 21Does anyone know if the original Nixon/Frost interviews are available anywhere? If I wanted to watch a movie about a television event it might make more sense to watch (well re-watch, I remember watching them when they aired, what can I say I was a weird 11 yo) the actual television event instead of a scripted version of it.
Besides, nobody does a better Nixon than Dan Ackroyd. :O)
Tomon 12 Dec 2008 at 3:36 pm 22What’s with the tag-line? “400 Million People were waiting for the truth”?
There’s not even 400 million people in America in 2008, let alone back then.
The Almighty Turtleon 12 Dec 2008 at 4:00 pm 23Dammit, the first half of my response was eaten by the Spamblocker.
The Almighty Turtleon 12 Dec 2008 at 4:00 pm 24Tom:
If I had to make a guess, it is referring to the total global population back then, or at least those in the US, China, Vietnam, and Europe.
Bridgeton 12 Dec 2008 at 5:04 pm 25The genius of DH: “What our thirty-seventh president really needs is an artist with the artistry to Downfall the man.”
So true. What a movie that is.
newguy40on 12 Dec 2008 at 5:10 pm 26I have only seen clips of Downfall. Seeing this here makes me want to rent this one.
Still… hard to beat Alec Guinnes chewing on the Reich Chancellery in “Hitler: The Last Ten Days”.
Kiton 12 Dec 2008 at 5:23 pm 27So better to watch on the small screen than the big?
Plot sounds like a tv movie.
Johnny Ed's Babyon 12 Dec 2008 at 6:06 pm 28The Ugly American:
From the commercials I thought Langella sounds like Rich Little imitating impersonating John Byner imitating Nixon. So theatrical.
newman:
I think the original Frost/Nixon interviews have been released on dvd,
And anyone that thinks Congress’s withdrawing support for the South Viet Nam army, after Nixon resigned and the elections of 1974, did not result in the death of millions did not live through those years and gets their history from Bill Ayers.
Tar Heel Momon 12 Dec 2008 at 7:15 pm 29newguy40, you have to see Downfall!
Bruno Ganz was robbed, robbed, I tell ya - he should have gotten the Oscar for bringing Hitler back to life. To watch as he consigns the German people to their fate with not a hint of regret over the misery he’s brought them - blaming THEM for losing the war - is truly chilling.
EPorvaznikon 12 Dec 2008 at 10:54 pm 30>>Besides, nobody does a better Nixon than Dan Ackroyd. :O)>>>
Awwww, what about Dan Hedaya?
Bloody Samon 13 Dec 2008 at 4:48 am 31Seeing the ads for Frost/Nixon gave me an unpleasant flashback to my recent attempt to make it through Robert Altman’s adaptation of the one-man show Secret Honor. Tedious, uninteresting monologues strung together with a mumbling, idiosyncratic take on Nixon by Philip Baker Hall. Who at least looks a little like Nixon. Langella here looks like himself, not Nixon. Not quite as distractingly “unalike” as Anthony Hopkins’ Nixon for Oliver Stone.
Biopics just don’t work for me when the iconic main characters lack any resemblance with the actors portraying them: Nixon, The Doors, W., etc. Basically any Oliver Stone project about a well-known public figure, political in nature or not, but, now, with Frost/Nixon, it looks like Ron Howard’s joined the Critical-Adulation/Celebrity-Status-Over-Historical-Authenticity casting club.
Breton 13 Dec 2008 at 12:48 pm 32Ever since I first heard that this film was being made, I’ve struggled to figure out what the point of it is, but now I understand: liberal wish-fulfillment. Are the original interviews unavailable for viewing? Are they locked up in a vault somewhere? Why not just simply watch them? Are there no transcripts? This film had to be made because, from what I’ve heard, Nixon came across too well in the actual interview.
Someday, liberals will have to make a 200 episode “mini-series” about the OJ Simpson trial. Most of it will simply be a word-for-word/shot-for-shot recreation of the actual trial, except this version will be made to showcase the racist LAPD’s plot to frame OJ.
jpon 15 Dec 2008 at 1:19 pm 33there is a sort of tie in to the Che movie here.
the reason JFK chose Vietnam to push back the Soviets expansion, was because he got played like a fiddle in the Cuban Missle crisis by the Soviets. He agreed that the US would never remove Castro from power, the only reason the turd is still in power. It came out when the Soviet Archives were released.
JFK then chose a jungle on the other side of the world to make a stand. The Soviets laughed at JFK and sinced his weakness. I fear something similar will be attempted against Obama. Putin definitely has some major plays in the works for next year
jpon 15 Dec 2008 at 1:23 pm 34anyone think the Dems not cutting off funding in Iraq this time around, given they could, is an admission of guilt of the 2 Million slaughtered by Pol Pot is blood on their hands?
not to mention the consequences are far higher given the Jihadist threat
roberton 18 Dec 2008 at 11:36 am 35there were less than 300 million in the country… over 6 billion in the world. i dont know what 400 referred to.
Ed Driscoll » Nixon And Ebert At The Movieson 05 Aug 2010 at 1:01 am 36[…] Ebert naturally gives the movie four stars, John Nolte provides a bit of much-needed perspective: Frost/Nixon is a full on respectable, accomplished and […]