London Film Festival: Frost/Nixon

Telling the true story of TV presenter and sometime journalist, David Frost's attempt and subsequent success at getting the only television interview with disgraced former US President, Richard Nixon, Ron Howard has directed a thinking man's Rocky, a politically charged, but never polemic thriller that is in love with the idea that simply pointing a camera at someone can reach into their soul and reveal their true person.

Like Howard's earlier Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon, is a film in which the outcome is already known - Apollo 13 makes it back safe and sound; Nixon apologises to the American people on TV - yet throughout remains thoroughly engaging, and at times edge of the seat exciting. Frost and his small team comprised of a pair of political outcasts and a television producer, are portrayed as the underdogs, granted an interview with Nixon because not only are they paying the most money, but because Nixon's team feel they can control the message. Michael Sheen's Frost is a charismatic playboy, wheeling and dealing and charming his way to success, not necessarily with the ability to make good on his promises; The question of whether he's in it for the ratings and his own fame, or as his team hope, to get a definitive character assassination of Nixon on tape, for everyone in the world to see is asked throughout the film.

Frank Langella's Nixon is a man of even greater depth; You can see in his eyes the constant scheming, thinking and outwitting. He is written and played as a man haunted by his past, lonely and isolated, consumed by self loathing and hatred, and undeniably human. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the film is just how empathetic one feels towards him; The film makers have managed to cut through thirty years worth of political anger and looked upon him as a person with failings like any one of us, yet never let us forget that his position meant those failings brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the loss of trust in the American political system for generations.

While both lead actors mimic some of the physical and oral mannerisms of their real life counterparts, these are both genuine performances, not mere impressions. The film portrays them as verbal boxers, sparring throughout the film, building to a final act showdown (which is even prefixed by a Rocky-esque training montage with books being hit instead of frozen meat) that is as tense and exhilarating as any car chase or gunfight. Indeed, this is a film that moves infinitely more briskly and with more vitality than Howard's plodding adaptatation of The Da Vinci Code and points at a director reinvigorated or at least returning to the form he's managed previously.

The essence of the film is that the camera can lay a person bare for all to see, that it can offer redemption and condemnation in equal measure. Frost/Nixon's script, direction and performances manage to capture this perfectly.