nan | 楠木

Frost/Nixon is Ron Howard’s dramatic retelling of British journalist and TV presenter David Frost’s interviews of former US President Richard Nixon in 1977. Howard obviously has very good material on his hands (the film is an adaptation of the play by Peter Morgan), and with the support of an excellent ensemble cast, delivers a top-notch studio production.

The film is satisfying as a tense political drama (thriller almost). British actor Michael Sheen (he played Tony Blair in The Queen) skillfully portrays David Frost, a talented, ambitious and flamboyant media man, whose Nixon project is looked upon as a joke by his media peers (and which the Nixon camp is hoping to leverage to stage a come-back). For Frost, the stakes are high – what had started simply as a bold idea to revive his US TV prospects developed into a win-or-lose-all fight for his entire career.

Frank Langella’s Nixon will surely be compared to Anthony Hopkins’ attempt in Oliver Stone’s biopic. Here we see a growling, lonely old man who still craves for power and influence, and whose sheer will and spirit, as well as self-reflection revealed in a few powerfully emotional scenes, will be hard not to win sympathy from the audience (indeed, the film has been criticized by some as over-sympathetic towards Nixon).

8/10