Frost Nixon Movie

They eyed each other like boxers at a weigh-in. Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) peeked through the curtains of the Western White House to size up his interviewer. David Frost (Michael Sheen) walked up to Nixon, cautiously appraising the former president before they battled in their landmark televised interviews. Ron Howard may already have made a big fisticuffs film -- 2005's "Cinderella Man" -- but the boxing metaphors abound in Dec.

Michael Sheen, who played talk show host David Frost both on stage and now in the upcoming screen version of "Frost/Nixon," knows that the transition can be scary. "The great joy and fear about working in front of a camera is that it picks up everything," said Sheen. He rejoined his stage costar Frank Langella for director Ron Howard's adaptation of Peter Morgan's acclaimed play about the 1977 interviews that revived Frost's career and humanized a disgraced Nixon. The film opens Friday.

It feels as much like a celebration as a wake: There's a scene toward the end of "Frost/Nixon," as Richard Nixon's landmark interviews with talk show host David Frost draw to a close, when the disgraced president sits down at the piano. As performed by Frank Langella and directed by Ron Howard, Nixon is both hopeful and doomed -- he knows his televised clash with Frost isn't yet over, that "victory isn't necessarily at hand," as Howard puts it.

There are many reasons to see "Frost/Nixon" including extraordinary performances, but I'll offer just one that stays with me. It's extremely satisfying to watch a film in which nothing is wasted, no moment is trivial, each line spoken leads you to something more. And "Frost/Nixon" is exactly that -- a study in making the large or the small count. Consider the shoes.