American presidents on film

U.S. presidents, to be exact. Taking a breather from our own electoral exercise that recently spawned a debate on the use of political ads, here's a rundown on how the American president has been portrayed in various ways on celluloid.

The American President (1995), directed by Rob Reiner.  Politics takes a back seat as widowed and extremely popular President Andrew Shephard (played by a dashing Michael Douglas) falls for and courts a very liberal and independent environmental advocate (Annette Benning).  The bad guy in this movie is a Republican senator (Richard Dreyfuss) who pounces on the budding romance to criticize Shephard for his supposed lack of morality.  What the president is guilty of is indecision - which his speech writer (Michael Fox) points out to him in an impassioned speech that almost steals the thunder away from Douglas' charm and touching resolve.

Air Force One (1997), directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Your American president can't get more heroic than this. Harrison Ford's President James Marshall is a war veteran, an enemy of terrorism, and a devoted husband and father. So when his titular plane is hijacked, he stays on the plane to rescue his family hostaged by Russian terrorists led by Gary Oldman. Naturally, he saves the rest of the passengers as well. Yet for all of Marshall's kick-ass moves, the most memorable scene in the movie was played by an unnamed fighter pilot - he literally takes the bullet for his Chief Executive by using his weaponless plane to shield Air Force One against a barrage of missiles that enemy aircraft had launched against it.

Frost / Nixon (2008), directed by Ron Howard  - this is as real as it can get.  Frank Langella in an award-nominated performance does the amazing job of humanizing former President Richard Nixon, portraying him as a shrewd, ambitious leader far from the buffoon that everyone caricatured him to be, and yet driven by his own demons to make ethically questionable decisions.  The other person in the title is British broadcaster David Frost (Michael Sheen) who initially starts out as a journalistic joke - the buffoon, actually - but facing public humiliation and the crash of his own career, transforms into the broadcaster who, on live TV, does the one thing that none of his more respectable peers acheived:  force Nixon publicly to admit his complicity and accountability in the disaster that was Watergate.