"Frost/Nixon" is an exceptional film about an unexceptional (as the crow flies) historical footnote in our recent past. Despite the stylized, wellpolished treatment by director Ron Howard and sterling performances all 'round, one might easily wonder why Howard didn't choose to make a film about Bill Clinton playing sax on "The Tonight Show."

I may be downplaying the significance of the moment (especially to the radical left, as the incident did extract a pseudoconfession of duplicity from expresident Richard M. Nixon), but I still find it fascinating to note the particular moments in time to which some filmmakers are drawn.

Of all the snapshots of American history available to us (and after having watched HBO's phenomonal "John Adams" on DVD), Hollywood has chosen to illuminate a largely unremarkable interview between a British talk show host and a haunted politician hoping for a reprieve from the American people. Largely unremarkable, I say, because 90 percent of the interview between David Frost and Nixon was blasé, bordering on the comatose.

Yet by luck—or by some lastminute, conscienceraising awareness, if you are to believe the film—certain final moments of the interview became the sensationalized trial that many believe Nixon never withstood for crimes against the American people.

In terms of sheer storytelling power about Watergate and its aftermath, 1976's Oscar-laden "All the President's Men" (Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford) took a far more traditional approach, portraying the Watergate scandal as a whodunit and principals Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as intrepid, fact-finding sleuths.

In "Frost/Nixon" Michael Sheen plays David Frost, a skirtchasing "natural showman" who simply wants to interview Nixon because the expresident's "numbers are high." He's less interested in America's recent scandal than he is in ratings, and the venture begins as a lark.

Likable here as Frost, Sheen also played Prime Minister Tony Blair in "The Queen" (2006), and the two films' similarities are numerous. Earnest PM confronts an ominous, secretive monarch and finds himself mentally outmatched and over his head, yet manages to prevail.

In "Frost/Nixon" . . . well, ditto.

Both films, however, provide candid, fascinating character sketches, and audiences who crave no more than solid acting and plausible tension (as opposed to, say, pyrotechnics, Hobbits or zombies) will be pleasantly surprised. And while I would place "Frost/Nixon" in the "talking head" subcategory of the biographical social drama, I will also admit that it's a welldone, eminently watchable effort as well.

For the record, I do acknowledge a fondness for certain "talking head" flicks—films like "My Dinner with Andre," "This Waking Life" and TV's "Tuesdays with Morrie." While some may view cinema as blatant crass escapism, there does exist a certain minority who relish an existential lesson or two with their Slurpees and popcorn.

Director Howard has gathered an excellent cast to portray this slender slice of history, and I believe Frank Langella's Oscarnominated performance as Nixon is the film's highlight. Not exactly a presidential lookalike, he admirably captures the false bravado, the paranoid ticks and twitches that appeared to encompass Nixon during those final days in the limelight.

One scene in particular (whether factual or fictitious I don't know) captures both the essence and insanity of what the film attempts to convey: An inebriated Nixon calls to chat with Frost one evening and proceeds to lecture on the perils of being deemed an underachiever. Frost listens to the rant with silent bemusement, and Nixon finally admits to having had "a drink or two."

Yet the next morning, Nixon has no recollection of the call, and we realize the ex-president had been blitzed to the point of a blackout.

If indeed a factual account, how many other nights had Nixon so blithely picked up the phone and perhaps ranted to Leonid Brezhnev or Chairman Mao, his finger hovering over the button— you know, that button—and how close might we have come to global extinction, thanks to a man who would have woken up in the morning without having remembered a thing.