Playwright Peter Morgan restages the 1977 “no holds barred” TV interview of Richard Nixon by British talk-show host David Frost, and the drum-beating buildup to it. A prizefight metaphor runs throughout, permitting director Ron Howard to slip comfortably into the underdog mode of his Cinderella Man, with Frost, as it were, failing to lay a glove on Nixon going into the final round, then at last pinning him in a corner and pummeling some semblance of a confession out of him. This spectacle may satisfy the undying urge to spit on the corpse of the 37th President, as well as supply a general-purpose stand-in for the still elusive and impenitent 43rd President. (The undying urge to spit, it must be pointed out, tends to contradict the film’s premise that the interview in some way provided “closure.”) As a job of stagecraft, however, or screencraft, it’s a bit stunted, endlessly and explicitly talking out its points, and employing the unpardonable shortcut of pseudodocumentary interviews of various secondary characters, ostensibly at a later date, to further analyze, comment on, and embroider the points made elsewhere. With Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Kevin Bacon, Sam Rockwell, Oliver Platt, Matthew Macfadyen, and Rebecca Hall. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.