Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews
by Jorn Winther
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Actor: David Frost, Richard NixonDirector: Jorn Winther
Brand: WEA DES Moines Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-12-02
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Liberation Ent
DVD Reviews of Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews
DVD Review: An Intellectual Battle Royal for the Ages
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a movie I told myself that I could skip, because the format alone seemed to suggest that it could not be pulled off successfully. Plus, today with the theaters being flooded with so many bad movies, why take a chance? Yet, this movie's allure proved to be too enticing, and after having seen it, it also proves that in the hands of a skilled director, anything good (even with a bad vehicle) can happen. From now on I will be selecting my movies by directors, and no longer by actors.
The plot of the movie hangs on the 29 hours of Frost/Nixon Interviews that took place over 12 days, and were first aired in 1977. In the subtext of these interviews, it turns out to have been hidden a heavyweight championship bout between the two reigning intellectual giants and champions on either side of the media divide, for our times.
In one corner was little David Frost, who in his youth could have easily devoured a Goliath the likes of Richard Nixon. But David was no longer young. He had started to grey around the temples, and now was scrambling like old fighters are wont to do, trying to save his life, his reputation, and to recap a little of the past glory and a few of the much needed and waning dollars that used to flow through his hands like so much water. The odds were strongly against a comeback for this "has been David"-- a journalist, reporter and talk show host.
In the other corner was Richard Milhous Nixon, old "tricky Dick" himself, the last lion of the republican establishment, a veritable political Goliath, a survivor of many battles in which he was all but down for the ten count. Here he was, a warrior at eighty, robust, fit and sassy, egging and angling for a fight: for him the younger and more virile the opponent, the better. At stake were his legacy, his reputation and a rewriting of history to reflect his version of the events of the Watergate scandal.
Make no mistake about it, even though we already knew the outcome, this was political high-jinks at its best, the grand intellectual battle of our times, on par with the Scopes Monkey Trial, or the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Here was the last time we would ever get to see in the grand arena of public opinion Nixon "dancing like a butterfly and stinging like a bee " -- and little David Frost, loading his slingshot just one more time. One could not believe the excitement and tension conjured up by this artificially contrived battle royal of a movie.
The signature scene was almost assuredly apocryphal. It was a call by a drunken Nixon to Frost in the wee hours of the night. In his slurred soliloquy to Frost, Nixon laid all his marbles on the table and told Frost that he'd better bring everything he had, because he would need it. Nixon made on mistake about it, this was a fight to the death. He then wished Frost well; hung up the phone and promptly forgot that the phone call ever took place.
These two timeless gladiators squared off in the main arena for the last time to fight it out on TV to the death. Only one would come out alive, and with his reputation intact. Nixon was the defensive expert. He knew how to "slip punches," "hit below the belt," lie, and steal, when necessary: how to bob-and-weave, "stick and jab," and dance away, sapping the energy of much younger and stronger opponents. He did so ever so skillfully throughout the movie. That was what he did. That was what he had spent his whole forty years as a politician learning how to do. There were few tricks in the trick book that "old Tricky Dick" did not know. There was no one better at using slime to defeat an opponent. Nixon did not get the monocle "tricky Dick" for no reason. He was the consummate political street fighter, and for the first two thirds of the movie, he had Frost on the ropes.
But Frost had a few tricks of his own up his sleeve, and trapped Nixon in a neutral corner and banged away at his weakest point, his betrayal of the American people. The old lion fought heroically but in the end caved, exhausted by a more clever, younger, opponent.
Intellectual dramas do not get much better than this. Five Stars.
Description of Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews
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