Sometimes a good movie can be transformed into something great by a powerful third act. That is exactly the case with Ron Howard’s adaptation of screenwriter Peter Morgan’s (The Queen) Tony Award-winning play Frost/Nixon.

Frank Langella and Michael Sheen in Universal Pictures' Frost/Nixon

For roughly 90-minutes, the Apollo 13 auteur delivers a handsome, well-acted and relatively entertaining – if not entirely memorable – drama. Then, suddenly, almost on a dime, the energy level ramps itself up, the tension becomes palpable and the performances by Michael Sheen (as British journalist David Frost) and Frank Langella (as disgraced former President Richard Nixon) rise to a level they heretofore hadn’t been at before.

Set just after Nixon’s resignation, the film (as does the play) follows confident fame-seeking talk show host and popular European personality Frost as he almost maniacally pursues the disgraced ex-President for his first sit down interview post-Watergate. He agrees to the request for two reasons. The first is that Nixon sees sitting down with this virtual neophyte as an easy way to put some luster back upon his legacy. The second is that Frost is willing to pay more than anyone – even the networks – for the opportunity to speak with him.

The rest of the film is a chronicle of the events leading up to and including these interviews. From Frost's struggles to finance the endeavor himself, to the American news establishment calling the event a fiasco even before it began, to those naysayers being proven right for three-quarters of the interviews, to ultimate vindication when Nixon admits to wrongdoing, all the major moments are here.

While Frost/Nixon is hardly boring, by and large the first two acts never have that immediate urgency or invigorating energy similar of classic journalistic docudramas like Good Night, and Good Luck. or Call Northside 777. It doesn’t have the same intensity of focus; it doesn’t possess a similar sense of urgency. In fact, there is something decidedly rudimentary about the first few sections, a sort of paint-by-numbers familiarity that’s somewhat underwhelming.

That changes almost like the crack of the whip during the final half hour. Starting with an absolutely stunning phone conversation between Nixon and Frost, and concluding with that startling on-camera admission, the whole climactic section of the film screams by in an instant. What had been, more or less, a chronicle of failure transforms itself into a sublime underdog story where ultimate glory is the knockout of one of the most vilified figures of the Twentieth Century. It is a magnificent turn of events, the picture suddenly becoming wondrously magnetic and electrically alive.

None of this means Howard’s opus should be considered anything close to flawed. Both Sheen and Langella (it ends up not matter a bit that he looks nothing like Nixon), reprising their Broadway rolls, are excellent, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen and especially Oliver Platt adding superb support as some of the bit players helping facilitate this media circus. Morgan’s script is intelligent and erudite without being pompous, while Howard manages to confidently orchestrate the action without displaying the heavy hand some of his other dramas can sometimes exude.

I just wish the first two-thirds held the same sway over me as that wonderful third act does. The film, by and large, is a movie I enjoyed but never loved, and until the climax started to unfold I couldn’t help but wonder what the Academy Award-buzz has all been about.  

But there is nothing better then a movie that sends you out on an emotionally satisfying high, Howard and company doing just that and then some. In the grand scheme of things that’s more than enough for me, and while I still can’t quite understand why Oscar seems so infatuated with Frost/Nixon, the film is still so Presedentially entertaining I’d hardly vote for impeachment if it did garner a major nomination or two.