Frost/Nixon - Review

In 1977 Richard M. Nixon granted British playboy presenter turned journalist David Frost a series of twelve television interviews. This was the first time Nixon had spoken since his resignation in the midst of the Watergate scandal and Americans waited with baited breath, longing for the trial they’d been denied by newly president Gerald Ford’s blanket pardon. For eleven of twelve interviews nothing happened. Nixon, a master politician squared off against a foppish interviewer, dominated the conversation and twisted every question to earn sympathy. It was only in the final interview, the twelfth, that Frost struck by back pinning Nixon to the wall and forcing a moment of honesty in which Tricky Dick gave America the admission and apology it hungered for.

So perhaps it’s appropriate that Ron Howard’s movie, based on a play written about the event, reels out much the same way. For most of its running time Frost/Nixon languishes. Nothing happens. It’s only in the film’s final moments, as Frost at last decides to take the interview seriously, that Howard ratchets up the intensity, slamming home his movie’s place in this year’s Oscar race and justifying the existence of an otherwise low-key, forgettable movie.

It is Frank Langella’s performance as Nixon which carries the film. His Nixon is a brilliant and broken husk, desperate to return to power and unwilling to admit that it’s no longer possible. When he’s contacted by David Frost (Michael Sheen) for an interview, he jumps at it in the perhaps unrealistic hope that speaking out will somehow rehabilitate him in the eyes of the American people. This movie is, more than anything else, about his journey in coming to grips with the fact that his political career is over, and that the best he can hope for from here on out are endless days wearing loafers and playing his most hated sport: golf.

Golf is a horrifying game, but being forced to spend his life putting hardly seems an appropriate penance for Nixon’s national villainy. To prepare for the interview, Frost assembles a team of American researchers, who urge him to make this interview count for something. Give America the trial is never got, they urge, while Frost traipses off to star-studded LA parties with his leggy British girlfriend (Rebecca Hall). Michael Sheen and the rest of the actors in Frost’s interview team are criminally underutilized. Sheen, who looks almost uncannily like Frost, does an admirable job but he’s far too rarely on screen. When he is on screen, he’s dominated by others, in particular Nixon, and more often than not reduced to half-hearted platitudes. Nixon calls their interviews a duel, and it’s a duel he’s winning.

It’s Langella’s Nixon that you’ll remember, growling at his subordinates or ranting uncontrollably over the phone as Frost sits in stunned silence. It’s as if Frost can’t come to life until Nixon finally starts to fade away, and until he does David Frost is a man in the shadow of a giant. Kevin Bacon plays Nixon’s chief of staff Jack Brennan, delivering an almost creepy performance as a man so totally devoted to the ex-president that his loyalty at times borders on sexual attraction. Whether that’s an intentional choice by Bacon or only a side effect of the script is anyone’s guess, but it’s eerily effective in adding to the overbearing presence of Tricky Dick.

In setting up the interviews, Frost/Nixon struggles to find focus. David Frost isn’t taking things seriously, is barely involved in the process outside of fund raising, and so it’s hard to make him the center of the film. Nixon’s journey ends up being the heart of the story, but he’s the villain. David Frost is still our protagonist and the guy we’re rooting for. It’s a strange dynamic and one which the movie never quite sorts out until those final moments when director Ron Howard cuts to the chase, Frost drops his devil-may-care persona, and in one of the most intense conversations you’ll see on screen this year crushes Nixon between an interview vice grip. This is an ending which justifies the means taken to achieve it. Everything which came before it becomes worthwhile in those final moments, and makes Frost/Nixon a must see.

Martian Child - Review

Don Cheadle has a neat, and apt, summation of the stages of a film career: "The first stage is 'Who the hell is Don Cheadle?' The second is 'Get me Don Cheadle.' The third is 'Get me a Don Cheadle type.' The fourth is 'Get me a young Don Cheadle,' and the last is again 'Who the hell is Don Cheadle?”

With all the progress John Cusack has made in his career, what is he doing now playing what Cheadle would call “a John Cusack type"? Cusack has been on the verge for several years of escaping Lloyd Dobler once and for all, and with December’s Grace is Gone, he finally seems poised to pull it off. Martian Child however, is a complete retread: Cusack playing Cusack, except this time he’s got a kid in tow. At least it’s coming out before Grace is Gone, so it won’t be called a step backwards for the star, who really does deserve a hit.

Martian Child is based loosely on a story by science fiction writer David Gerrold, about his adoption of an eccentric young boy. Gerrold is single and gay, but since this is Hollywood Cusack’s version is a widower, having begun the adoption process before his wife’s death. Ready to quit wallowing David goes through with the adoption process and winds up with Dennis (Bobby Coleman), a boy who spends his time in a refrigerator box (since he’s allergic to the sun) and wears a weight belt made of batteries (since, without it, the Earth’s gravity would not hold him down). David is a science fiction writer after all, so these quirks appeal to him, despite warnings from his sister (Joan Cusack), slacker agent (Oliver Platt), and a stern adoption agency employee (Richard Schiff) that he has to eventually help Dennis learn to live among the earthlings.

The one person supporting David in his efforts is his wife’s friend Harlee (Amanda Peet), and wouldn’t you know it a love connection comes about by the end. The fact that Harlee and David barely spend any time together on screen doesn’t matter, because that romantic subplot has to find its way in there somehow, dammit. In fact, nearly all of Martian Child takes place off-screen, with the film hitting the high points—spirited bonding! tearful fighting!—and leaving us to fill in the emotional development. David tells Dennis to “stop saying that” when he asks “Was I bad?” but we’ve never heard Dennis say it before. Director Menno Meyjes doesn’t want us to join David on his emotional journey, but just trust Cusack to report back all the relevant details.

Cusack and Coleman play well off each other as father and son, but you get the sense that their interactions would be a lot more fun to watch if we got to see their relationship progress naturally, rather than being crammed into an awkward plot about “being true to yourself” and “learning to love again.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, but other movies have done it better. With the sci-fi element so glossed over and confused as to be almost irrelevant, Martian Child is just a generic version of any other dramatic comedy about familial love—that is to say, not terribly interesting. Hang on until Grace is Gone, when hopefully we’ll finally see a project worthy of Cusack’s talents.