Directed by Ron Howard
Rated R
(Three and one half stars)

“Frost/Nixon” is a generation-sensitive film. Just as being 12 years old gives you an edge in picking up the subtleties of “Hannah Montana,” having lived through the 1960's provides the post-traumatic twitches required to truly appreciate coming face-to-face with an incarnation of Richard Nixon.

And, Incarnation may be the best word to describe Frank Langella’s masterful portrayal of Nixon. Langella bypasses any attempt at impersonation of the 37th president. It’s a smart move.

In life, Nixon was a walking cartoon and it would be easy for an actor to get ensnared in his myriad of ticks and mannerisms. Instead, Langella digs beneath the eyebrows and jowls to where the good stuff is: the tortured psyche that animated Nixon.

The film is centered around a series of interviews Nixon gave to David Frost (Michael Sheen) in 1977, three years after Nixon left office. By then both Nixon and Frost were men trying to resurrect damaged careers.

Nixon was hoping to salvage his political legacy in the wake of his forced resignation from the presidency brought on by the Watergate scandal. He shared the journalism profession’s view that Frost was a lightweight and saw the interviews as an easy way to get back in front of the American public.

As an interviewer, Frost was a lightweight but as a hustler he was not. Frost had just seen his TV show cancelled and set his sights on the Nixon interviews as his ticket back on the A-list. One way or another he was going to use Nixon to re-establish his reputation.

Director Ron Howard stays true to the play from which “Frost/Nixon” was adapted. The story is structured more like a prizefight than a political thriller. Alone on the claustrophobic interview set, under the bright television lights, Nixon and Frost come to realize the symmetry of their situation. They are both men who’ve put their lives in absolute service to their ambitions and they each have to damage the other to get what they need.

The beauty of this film—and it is a beautiful film—is in watching the two men, each in their own way, trying to outmaneuver the other: Frost the amoral hustler and Nixon the paranoid schemer.

To that end Langella and Sheen come to dominate the film. There is a lot of first-rate talent in the cast (Kevin Bacon plays Nixon’s chief of staff, Jack Brennan, while Oliver Platt as Bob Zelnick and Sam Rockwell as James Reston Jr. are Frost’s political strategists) but it is relegated to the role of support staff.

Howard doesn’t give them much to do. In fact, a young Diane Sawyer (Kate Jennings Grant) shows up as one of Nixon’s aides—an interesting historical footnote—and makes no impression at all. Howard’s attention is glued to Langella and Sheen, and they repay the favor.

While Sheen holds up his end in this psychological sparring match, it’s Langella who gives the film the historical weight that Howard is striving for. Nixon was a strange man living out a strange fate in one of the most seismic moments in our nation’s history.

The Nixon administration was, in many ways, a conservative rearguard action in the face of the sudden onslaught of the cultural wars. The counter-revolution wouldn’t find its happy warrior until Ronald Reagan captured the White House three years later.

Until then, Nixon represented the shadow side of a nation almost unhinged by its own creative impulses. Most people who lived through the era couldn’t quite grasp how Nixon welded power. In Langella’s performance you can almost glimpse not only what made Nixon tick, but how he managed to hold sway over the country.

Langella’s Nixon is a menacing presence that will at once send a creepy sensation rippling up your spine and make sense out of history.