"Frost/Nixon" is a spellbinding film version of Peter Morgan's play about the televised confrontation between an English talk show host and the former president who had resigned in disgrace three years before. 

A brief, understated scene in "Frost/Nixon" perfectly captures the subtle poignance in an absorbing film replete with telling moments and powerful performances.

It's 1977, and disgraced former president Richard Nixon, played mesmerizingly by Frank Langella, has lost his public swagger. He emerges from the final bout in a series of interviews with David Frost looking beaten down and bewildered.

"Don't forget," warns his producer (Matthew Macfadyen), "you're in there with a major operator." In the preliminary exchanges, Nixon outmaneuvers his adversary at every turn. Frost may have been fed the right questions by his handlers, but he can't assert himself long enough to pose them in the face of Nixon's self-serving evasions and crafty ramblings to run out the clock. Yet "Frost/Nixon" operates on still another dramatic plane -- a battle of wits between two adversaries who turn out to be fully worthy of one another. Both men are desperate to succeed. Frost needs to revive a sagging career by selling an expensive, problematic production that he's been forced to finance in large part out of his own pocket. Nixon needs to start the long process of rehabilitating himself, and has been assured by his handlers that Frost, an amiable lightweight, will be a pushover.

The meat of the movie is the electric "mano a mano" between the title characters. In the film's most powerful scene, a drink-softened Nixon calls Frost in his hotel room late on the eve of the final interview, and ruminates on their shared backgrounds as kids from the wrong side of the tracks who have had to battle the elites for everything. "The snobs look down on you," he rambles. "No matter how high we get, they still look down on us."

Nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor (Langella), "Frost/Nixon" is not a conventional biopic. It effectively evokes the sociocultural milieu of the time and presents a probing character study. It is most like a thriller as Frost's career hinges on getting the interviews and eliciting Nixon's on-air apology. 

It is rated R and has a running time of 122 minutes.  As part of The Smith's "Academy Showcase" film series, all seats for the Friday morning screening are $3.