acting is great but this story is complete *beep*
1. As documented elsewhere on the web, a lot of the details of this thing are flat out wrong. Nixon was not 'tricked' and there wasn't a big showdown Rocky moment. It's all added to give the film a narrative and 'stakes'.
2. David Frost would later go on to do such "investigative" and "hard hitting" journalism as when he did fawning, boot licking interviews of that bastion of good politics, Muamar Gaddafi. Nobody knows how much David Frost got payed to do it, but I don't think he had a satisfied, triumphant, libertine smirk on his face as he accepted the massive bags of cash it would take him to avoid asking a mass murdering torturer why he did it.
3. And as for mass murdering torturers, lets go back to Nixon again. What is David Frosts big "blango" question? It's about *beep* watergate? Nixon ran a secret war in Cambodia, which many would argue helped set the chaotic power vacuum that the Khmer Rouge later stepped into, committing mass genocide. Nixon oversaw the Vietnam War for, lets see, 1968 to 1975. He also was Vice President under Eisenhower when we overthrew the ****** government of Iran. Nixon was also there during the Red Scare, helping out the Inquisitors while they did their dirty work against the various innocent people banned and banished during that time. Nixon went through election after election after election.
Do you really think Nixon gives two *beep* about some reporter bitching about Watergate? Yes, he got impeached. He also gave orders resulting in the death of tens of thousands. Which bad actions of Nixon did "Iconoclast" Frost choose to "go after"? Some flub ups in a meeting or something. A silly little burglary and a silly little cover up.
How much stuff do you think Nixon and J Edgar Hoover really covered up? Stuff that actually, you know, mattered?
If you have heard of MK ULTRA, or the CIAs various domestic spying programs, or the NSA? a lot of that was happening under Nixon. FBI bugging civil rights people? Under Nixon. Come on people. Wake up.
This movie is not about resistance to authority. It's authority co-opting yet another form of supposed counter-balance - the media. David Frost, in his Gadaffi debacle, proved himself to be one of the least principled, most corruptible journalists out there. But this movie makes him seem like some kind of hero.
Who were real journalistic heroes? The people who were actually reporting on Watergate, on Vietnam, on Cambodia, not someone who pounces in years after the fact and tries to kick an old man while he is down. It's pathetic.
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Other than the gross lack of relationship to anything remotely resembling reality, the movie is great. It's a great story, great acting, great dialog, great camera work, great costumes, great shot composition, etc.
The problem is that its almost completely fiction. Not just in the letter of history, but in the whole meaning and point.