Review: 'Elvis & Nixon' recalls a bizarre moment in history
On December 21, 1970, Elvis Presley showed up bright and early at the White House gates, delivering a barely legible note he'd scrawled on American Airlines stationery to President Richard Nixon.
He said he'd love to come by and meet the president, and that he was also seeking a badge to be a federal agent, so he could help combat the drug culture and the "hippie elements" ruining the country.
[...] though the initial reaction of Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, was "You must be kidding" — scrawled in the margins of a memo — that meeting did take place, hours later.
What the movie, directed by Liza Johnson, lacks in factual material it replaces with whimsy and quirky humor, helped greatly by the casting of Michael Shannon as Presley and Kevin Spacey as Nixon.
En route, there's an amusing scene where some Elvis impersonators approach him in an airport lounge.
Both Presley and Nixon are such larger-than-life characters that any actor playing them seems likely to teeter on the precipice of mimicry.
Shannon, a terrific actor whose features don't resemble Presley's at all, does a nice job of avoiding the cartoonish, finding a way to explore the essence of his character, physically and vocally (that slurred "thank you very much.")
[...] this fascinating encounter goes, combining things we know happened (the photo, the hug Elvis offers) with things we don't (did Elvis really demonstrate karate?)