Movie Review: 'Elvis & Nixon'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - As casting and acting stunts go, it's a double doozy, one of those truths that really is stranger than fiction.
After all, what movie buff could resist the opportunity to see thespians Spacey and Shannon as icons Nixon and Presley in Elvis & Nixon?
After all, Kevin Spacey is not only a two-time Oscar winner for Best Actor in 1999 for American Beauty and Best Supporting Actor in 1995 for The Usual Suspects, but, as lots of television-talk-show viewers know, he is also an acknowledged, astonishing impressionist.
Meanwhile, Michael Shannon has established himself on the movie landscape in recent years with not only an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 2008 for Revolutionary Road, but interesting, accomplished, distinctive work in such films as 99 Homes, Take Shelter, and Midnight Special.
So offering Spacey as President Richard Nixon, the leader of the free world, opposite Shannon as king of rock 'n roll Elvis Presley in a loose biographical comedy about them meeting is a grabber.
Once again, as he did in 2008 in Frost/Nixon, when Frank Langella played him, President Nixon gets second titular billing (and less screen time) as moviegoers come to realize that David Frost wasn't the only celebrity to have a movie-worthy meeting with Richard Nixon.
Elvis & Nixon is based on an incident that occurred in on a December morning in 1970, when the most influential entertainer in the world, sometimes referred to by disapproving non-fans as The Pelvis, showed up on the lawn of the White House, accompanied by best friend Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer), requesting a meeting with the most powerful man in the world, later to be referred to disrespectfully as Tricky Dick.
This after a bored Elvis had written the Commander-in-Chief an urgent six-page letter lamenting the moral decline among young people in America and requesting a meeting with the president and asking to be sworn in as an undercover "Federal agent-at-large," in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
Nixon was initially reluctant to meet with him, as you might imagine, ostensibly because the proposed time conflicted with the president's regular nap time.
But POTUS eventually agreed to it, convinced by White House staffer Egil Krogh (Colin Hanks) that it was a useful public-relations coup and might serve to boost the president's popularity among young voters.
For the occasion, Elvis brought gifts to the White House meeting, which took place in the Oval Office, including a Colt .45 pistol.
What Elvis and Nixon discovered during their encounter, which was not taped because the president had not yet installed what would become a storied taping system, was that they had a lot more in common than they – or we – thought.
And the meeting actually managed to remain a secret for quite some time after Elvis had left THE building: today it would probably be grist for the news mill within moments.
Director Liza Johnson (Return, Hateship Loveship) works from a humorous look at the confrontation by screenwriters Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal, and Cary Elwes that ever-so-slightly fictionalizes a true-story encounter that was immortalized in a famous photograph that turned out to be one of the most indelible photographs in American history; in fact, it's the single most requested photograph in the National Archives.
She gives her two leads -- neither of whom actually looks like the character he's playing or resorts to prosthetics -- room to roam within those characters instead of saddling them with the responsibility of delivering slavish impressions. And Spacey and Shannon come through for her, ably capturing the spirit and essence of the roles, if not admirably, then at least sufficiently for our spectating enjoyment, generating a few subtle laughs and lots of knowing smiles.
So we'll meet 2-1/2 stars out of 4 for the slight but enjoyable Elvis & Nixon. Drink it in as an iconic, ironic tonic.
