Gripping account of a titanic clash

RON HOWARD'S film is surprisingly gripping. It turns on the incremental power shifts in the set-up and execution of the 1977 TV interview in which David Frost got the disgraced President Richard Nixon to admit he had let the American people down with his criminal conduct in the Watergate affair. Even though the subject matter is both overfamiliar and historically distant, Frost/Nixon weaves it into a compelling drama of two very different men locked in gladiatorial combat for the limelight.

For this we have not only Howard to thank, but also the writer and stars. The script is adapted from his own stage play by Peter Morgan, who proved his skill at making a well-known story feel emotionally fresh and urgent with The Queen. And Frost and Nixon are played, as they were on stage, by Michael Sheen and Frank Langella, whose own personalities illuminate the roles.

The chameleon-like Sheen is all teeth and hair as the gadfly Frost. His perma-grin and his self-belief never falter, even when he's told he lacks "any discernible quality". Some of the best acting on the screen is done by Sheen with his eyes alone, when Frost senses he's lost control of the interview as Nixon pours an unstoppable torrent of self-serving anecdote over him.

For his part, Langella's Nixon is a bear of a man, carrying his intellectual and physical bulk with dignity, his expansive body language a tool for dominating and manipulating people. "Do any fornicating?" he rumbles to wrongfoot Frost seconds before the cameras roll. Yet behind Nixon's arrogance, Langella manages to generate sympathy for a man who cannot admit he is the architect of his own downfall.

There is strong support from an impassioned Sam Rockwell and a jovial Oliver Platt as American researchers, and Toby Jones as gnome-like literary agent Swifty Lazar. Weirdly, though, Matthew Macfadyen's John Birt then Frost's producer looks and sounds like Richard Madeley. These characters address the camera directly in flash-forward inserts, which, along with the washed-out Seventies palette, give the film a documentary feel.

There are flaws. Rebecca Hall, as Frost's girlfriend Caroline, seems to be there simply to underline his playboy credentials, and to add period detail with her hair and frocks. Although Howard and Morgan try to open out the story it still sometimes has the enclosed feel of a play. But this is a fine, intelligently written and superlatively acted piece which addresses fame, ambition, and the problems faced by impoverished Brits trying to chisel a niche in the American entertainment market.

Frost/Nixon screens on Saturday as part of the London Film Festival, and is on general release from 9 January.