Frost/Nixon

The words “I’m not a crook” are forever associated with Richard M. Nixon. As Frank Langella plays him in Ron Howard’s wry drama about his 1977 post-presidential television interview with our own David Frost, you’d be hard pushed not to believe him. A boxing analogy serves well considering how the Frost and Nixon team corners plot the downfall of their respective opponents. Unsettling and sickly at first, Sheen nails his performance of Frost. But the man whose over-perspiration cost him the 1960 election to Kennedy is revealed here to be not too dissimilar to your grandfather: thoughtful, fragile, and even humorous. But before we start browbeating Howard or Langella for making nice with a political villain of the twentieth century, consider the fact that he was, after all, simply human. To show Nixon as uncomfortable in his own skin and not the monolithic symbol of all evil is Howard and Langella’s true achievement. [Andrew McWhirter]