Frank Langella looks and sounds nothing like Richard Nixon. He does play Nixon in "Frost/Nixon." Didn't anybody notice this while filming the movie? Oliver Platt, as one of Frost's "cornermen," does a better impression of Nixon during their prep.
"Frost/Nixon" is based on (a play based on) a series of famous interviews. In a short feature on the DVD, Ron Howard extolls the fidelity of the film while comparison shots of interview and movie are played. Real Nixon is tired and contrite while Langella Nixon devours the kitschy seventies scenery, goosing lines and drawing out pauses for cheap dramatic effect.
The final interview scene is the reason "Frost/Nixon" exists. The rest is a blurry preamble: research montages; exposition told, then shown, then told again; and news reports. The ready-made arc of the original interviews has been pulled apart, burnished using Ron Howard's aggressively middlebrow MO, and bolted back together as an "improvement" on the real thing.
2 comments:
It's a great movie to watch if you do research and interviewing for a living. But yeah, there is a wee bit too much exposition and back story.
lmao @ Dick
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