Frank Langella, who won a Tony Award for his harrowing on-stage portrayal of former president Richard Nixon, and Michael Sheen, as lightweight TV interviewer David Frost, deliver compelling performances in director Ron Howard's big-screen adaptation of Peter Morgan's play Frost/Nixon. A dialogue-driven narrative told effectively by use of news-reel footage spliced between docu-style "interviews" of key players, the film is a provocative morality tale that pits two charismatic but flawed men against each other in a verbal sparring match. The sheer arrogance and audacity of the Watergate scandal coupled with civil unrest and an unpopular war provides an interesting backdrop along with a sense of timeliness in light of our current political climate.

Frost/Nixon tells the story of a series of televised interviews that Nixon, coaxed by a large payday, granted Frost in 1977. Heretofore, Frost was widely known as a softball interviewer who was more at home chatting with vapid celebrities than matching wits with a savvy politician like Nixon. Frost, fueled by ambition and an inner drive to gain respect and legitimacy within journalistic circles, is hell-bent on securing an admission of guilt from Nixon and to give him "the trial that he never had."

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