Salt Lake Tribune Review

Watching a stage play can be both comforting and claustrophobic, as the characters show their human foibles literally in front of you. Capturing that same feeling on a movie screen can both draw you in (thanks to close-ups that can suck you into the character's pores) and be distancing (because the actors are no longer in the same room with you).
Two prestigious dramas adapted from Broadway plays open today -- "Frost/Nixon" and "Doubt" -- with different takes on translating the stage experience to the screen. In both cases, the transfers lack some oomph, in spite of powerhouse acting.
Peter Morgan's play "Frost/Nixon," and the screenplay Morgan adapted, centers on the historic 1977 TV interviews between disgraced former President Richard M. Nixon and British TV presenter David Frost. In the film, as on Broadway and the West End, Frank Langella plays Nixon and Michael Sheen (who played Tony Blair in the Morgan-penned "The Queen") as Frost.
Morgan paints the interviews as a Hail Mary pass for both men to save their reputations. Nixon sought the chance to rewrite history's verdict of his failed and corrupt presidency, while Frost -- whose gigs in the United States and Australia were faltering -- wanted to rise from journeyman TV host to a respectable newsmaking interviewer.
When "Frost/Nixon" centers on these two men, the fireworks are considerable. Langella's impersonation of Nixon is note-perfect, and he also captures the self-delusion of the old politician as he blusters and rambles through his many rationalizations for Watergate and Vietnam. Sheen turns Frost into an agile matador for Nixon's bull, deflecting the ex-president's lies with a raised eyebrow.
But when director Ron Howard turns away from the main showdown, the movie drags. Scenes centering on Frost's research team (Sam Rockwell, Matthew McFayden and Oliver Platt) or his girlfriend (Rebecca Hall), or of Nixon being bucked up by his loyal assistant Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon) add some underpinning information but slow down the drama. In "Frost/Nixon," we want Frost and Nixon, not their surrogates.
There's no such expansion in "Doubt," as director/screenwriter John Patrick Shanley presents his Pulitzer-winning play as he wrote it: Four characters in conflict, no filler.
In St. Nicholas, a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, a new priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is shaking up the stodgy traditions long maintained by the school's principal, Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep). Powerless against the male Catholic hierarchy, Sister Aloysius sees an opening when she learns from the young innocent Sister James (Amy Adams) that Flynn has developed an interest in the school's first black student, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster).
Sister Aloysius' suspicions turn to accusations, which set the nun and the priest on a collision course. In the tight confines of St. Nicholas' offices, Flynn and Sister Aloysius never say out loud what she accuses him of doing -- but the way they don't say it, in Shanley's sharp dialogue, lays everything on the table.
The acting fireworks, as with "Frost/Nixon," are dynamic. Hoffman's portrayal is loaded with righteous indignation and just a hint of remorse -- all in service of Shanley's intent to leave us questioning who's right in this battle of wills. Streep gives a solid performance, though a tad mannered in her Bronx accent -- and she has the movie stolen out from under her by Viola Davis, in a brief but powerful turn as Donald's mother, who has an agenda Sister Aloysius never sees coming.
But where Howard pumps too much extraneous material into "Frost/Nixon," Shanley doesn't provide enough audience relief in "Doubt." Shanley directs as if he's still making a stage play, and sets his actors' intensity to reach the cheap seats without any modulation.
Both movies have their strong points, mostly in the acting. But both make you eager to see the original stage versions, to see what they missed.

spmeans@sltrib.com

Additional Photos