Frost/Nixon (2008)
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Reviews Counted: 217
Fresh: 199 | Rotten: 18
Frost/Nixon is weighty and eloquent; a cross between a boxing match and a ballet with Oscar worthy performances.
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Critic Reviews: 46
Fresh: 41 | Rotten: 5
Frost/Nixon is weighty and eloquent; a cross between a boxing match and a ballet with Oscar worthy performances.
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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 107,162
My Rating
Movie Info
Hollywood heavyweight Ron Howard adapts playwright Peter Morgan's West End hit for the silver screen with this feature focusing on the 1977 television interviews between journalist David Frost (Michael Sheen) and former president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella). At the time Nixon sat down with Frost to discuss the sordid details that ultimately derailed his presidency, it had been three years since the former commander in chief had been forced out of office. The Watergate scandal was still fresh
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Cast
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Frank Langella
Richard Nixon -
Michael Sheen
David Frost -
Kevin Bacon
Jack Brennan -
Rebecca Hall
Caroline Cushing -
Toby Jones
Swifty Lazar -
Matthew MacFadyen
John Birt -
Oliver Platt
Bob Zelnick -
Sam Rockwell
James Reston Jr. -
Patty McCormack
Pat Nixon -
Andy Milder
Frank Gannon -
Kate Jennings Grant
Diane Sawyer -
Eve Curtis
Sue Mengers -
Jenn Gotzon
Tricia Nixon
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All Critics (222) | Top Critics (48) | Fresh (203) | Rotten (18) | DVD (13)
Nixon is infinitely more complex than George W. Bush, which is probably why this one slice of his life is more intriguing than "W," which covers decades.
Top CriticThe outcome isn't half as conflicted as you might imagine, though it's hard to argue that Howard brings anything new to Morgan's play.
All this makes for great entertainment on the big screen, though the real legacy of the Nixon interviews is more vexing than Morgan would have us understand.
The result is involving, engrossing cinema -- more thrilling, in fact, than Howard's The Da Vinci Code -- filmmaking of a type rarely seen anymore and sorely missed.
This is the irony of Frost/Nixon: Though it chronicles the moment when (in theory) the 37th president of the United States was cut down to size, the movie's presentation of him is utterly larger than life.
Langella is not a natural Nixon; he has a voluptuary's face and a self-assurance the president only dreamed of. So he burrows into Nixon and comes out with a figure who is less a simulacrum than the definitive interpretation.
Langella completely drives this film and he's amazing.
David Frost wasn't Richard Nixon's foe so much as that camera's red light, which Ron Howard films as futuristic, robotic and destructive from Nixon's vantage point. What audiences deduce from one shot can imprint how an entire era is interpreted.
The sparring, the research, the failed strategies, and the returns for more elicit an image of boxing more than anything else; while "two men in shorts punch each other until one cannot continue" is also dry on paper, in practice it is much more visceral
Howard can't, as someone mentions in the film, distinguish between a performer and a journalist
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Entertaining and provocative...a satisfying intellectual bout. [Blu-ray]
... Plays like an epic tragedy and is nothing short of riveting.
Extras include a short featurette on the Nixon Library and - best of all - one comparing key interview footage from the movie with comparable footage from the real interviews.
Clearly the work of a mature filmmaker, one with the patience and self confidence to make a smart film whose success is largely in the hands of its talented cast.
A belated opportunity for any still-embittered Baby Boomers to feel vindicated and to bask in Nixon's humiliation.
Peter Morgan's play about the behind-the-scenes research, negotiation and fundraising that produced the Frost-Nixon interviews may not sound like natural-born movie material...But the talk is choice, and the film... is mesmerizing.
The history lesson is a nice bonus, but it's the art and the acting that give the film its power and resonance.
The director of Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind serves up a merely pleasing, vaguely edifying tale of penitence and redemption, or something like that.
Estupendo cine sobre periodismo y política, que logra fascinar con sus entretelones de una entrevista crucial que es presentada casi como si fuera una pelea de boxeo.
Audience Reviews for Frost/Nixon
Super Reviewer
FROST/NIXON is a film that takes itself seriously, perhaps a bit too seriously. It exceeds two hours of screen time to chronicle a tale that could be documented just as effectively in a forty-five-minute television special. There is so much talking going on that we often feel like we're watching C-SPAN. I have to wonder how much of the interviews were cut out for the purpose of interesting the audience. There was a good amount of extraneous information delivered. At least the interview in which Nixon took twenty-three minutes to respond to a simple question, was truncated down to around five minutes. FROST/NIXON also seems like one of Oliver Stone's presidential dramatizations. There is a lot of story as well as information given-though if Stone himself had directed, it would have been a more appropriately heavy take on the events-as well as a good amount of depth planted inside the characters-again, it's not the kind of depth we particularly need. To compare with that director's similar works, FROST/NIXON is nowhere near as tremendously engaging, well-told, and classic as JFK; but it isn't nearly as dreadfully lackluster, insulting, and half-baked as W., either. In short, it's a fine drama.
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Super Reviewer
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- David Frost: Are you really saying the President can do something illegal?
- Richard Nixon: I'm saying that when the President does it, it's *not* illegal!
- David Frost: I'm sorry?
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- Jack Brennan: The third part of the interview will be titled, 'Nixon, the Man.'
- Richard Nixon: As opposed to what, 'Nixon, the Horse?'
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- David Frost: Are you really saying the President can do something illegal?
- Richard Nixon: I'm saying that when the President does it, it's *not* illegal!
- David Frost: I'm sorry?
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Foreign Titles
- Frost / Nixon, l'heure de vérité (FR)
- El desafío, Frost contra Nixon (ES)
Furthermore, upon researching the interviews, I read that David Frost's experience was different to what's seen in the film. According to his partner Caroline Cushing, he didn't fret endlessly over his performances with Nixon, he was quite content with each of the interviews.
So, like many films 'inspired by true events', the film takes liberties with the facts. However this doesn't matter to the viewer, the artistic licence makes for a great piece of dramatisation. The film is quite a gruelling experience; the pressure in and out of the interviews is intense. For a film that concerns conversations, it is quite remarkable how compelling and uncomfortable it is. The wars of words and mind games are more engrossing than any boxing match in 'Raging Bull' or 'The Fighter'.
The film's chief merit lies in its performances. Martin Sheen sounds and even looks exactly like David Frost, it is quite uncanny. And whilst not meeting the likeliness achieved by Sheen, Frank Langella is equally as captivating as Nixon. Also, Kevin Bacon gives a good, typical Kevin Bacon performance as Jack Brennan, the officious aide to the President.
Frost/Nixon is a taut, entertaining dramatisation with strong performances and an accomplished period aura.