Reporters love the reporters in "Frost/Nixon"

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Get ready to read a lot of favorable pieces about "Frost/Nixon," which opens December 5.

That's not because Ron Howard's movie about a series of encounters between British journalist David Frost and former president Richard Nixon is flawless (it's good, with strong performances and cultural tonalities and a powerful sense of justice, but not flawless), but because no movie flatters the press like this one.

You have to go back to 90's entertainments like "The Paper" to see even traces of this kind of moral elevation, and all the way back to "All the President's Men" to find a heroism so comprehensive. Most journalistic movies in the past thirty years have been informed by more cynical conceptions: opportunism, ("The Insider"), naivete ("Absence of Malice") cheating ("Shattered Glass") shallowness ("The Devil Wears Prada"), and all of the above ("Broadcast News").

A quick summary on F/N: The movie, based on Peter Morgan's play, takes a look at the verbal sparring -- more like a lopsided UFC match until the inevitable final-round comeback -- between Nixon (Frank Langella) and Frost (Michael Sheen) in the months shortly after Nixon's resignation. But the real drama is between Frost and his team: he comes from a slick talk-show background, and they are relentless (though not entirely humorless) truthseekers.

The movie, like so many about journalism, understands reporting as a mix of detective work and cross-examination, not as a quest for revelation and information. The great achievement comes when Frost corners Nixon, like some kind of debate-team champion, into a confession, and the coup de grace is pulled off with some kind of muddy investigative triumph (the smoking gun was in federal papers...the...whole...time).

No matter. Frost wins his battle, and the team, which includes righteous New York Times scribe James Reston Jr. in Sam Rockwell's best turn in a long time, is celebrated not just onscreen but through viewer catharsis.

The timing couldn't be better for such a message of uplift. Journalists, you may have noticed, are taking a beating on all fronts. There's Sarah Palin, telling us how she'd rather go directly to the American people instead of through pesky and unnecessary filters; they just get in the way. There's the Tribune Co., the debt-laden parent of the Los Angeles Times, cutting meat and bone and the entire animal. And then there's all the media themselves telling us, tendentiously, how all the other media are too tendentious to listen to.

Amid all this, what could be more comforting than a reminder -- no, a celebration -- of a time when journalists mattered, when they didn't just have the courage of their convictions but used those convictions to topple leaders, and were celebrated as rock stars for doing so? At a media screening on Tuesday, there was knowing, sometimes showy, laughter to many of the media jokes, vocal reminders that the many press in the audience Get It and will happily crow about this movie to show that they Get It.

When "Sideways" made its unlikely run to awards and box-office glory four years ago, it did so on the backs of critics drawn to Paul Giamatti's inner critic and curmudgeon. Print and broadcast reporters will be similarly enthused to see such glowing versions of themselves.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter