All The President's Men

All the President's Men (1976)

Runtime: 138 minutes

Directed by: Alan J. Pakula

Starring: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, 

From: Warner Bros.

I explain why I saw this movie below... if you don't realize who wrote the screenplay: 

Yesterday's death of legendary screenwriter William Goldman received a surprising-but thankfully-strong reaction from the online community due to the number of classic films he wrote; I also saw elsewhere that he offered help for a number of films over the years-the example I saw was that he convinced Demme to remove a scene from The Silence of the Lambs, and that resulted in the incredible fake-out scene during the final act. While Goldman was ultimately unhappy with director Alan J. Pakula's constant calls for rewrites, his adapting the book of the same name from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein was one of his most famous-and best-jobs as a writer of screenplays.

This is a straightforward investigative story where the two Washington Post newspaper reporters investigate the case of an attempted burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, which were located in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. They quickly realize something very fishy is going on; there are plenty of sources online that explain the whole mess far better than I can without me writing a thesis about it, but in short it was connected to Richard Nixon and his campaign for him to earn a second term as President of the United States; how ironic that the committee was known as the Committee to Re-Elect the President and they were actually known as CREEP. Anyhow, the end result was that Nixon resigned as President and ever since then, Americans have been more wary of the federal government.

Presumably most if not all the film was accurate to what actually happened; I know the basics were definitely correct; for me, I was always compelled by this story of Woodward and Bernstein working the story by jotting down notes, attempting to do interviews, working the phones, etc. It is such an unbelievable story the conspiracy for a President to commit all those illegal acts in order to ensure he would win a Presidential election, at least for a nerd like me I'll be greatly interested in seeing what happened. The production is of a very high quality; in addition, it's a treat seeing Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman act separately in various motion pictures-getting to see them together as the leads was tremendous. The cast was full of famous faces (including Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat, only revealed decades later as Mark Felt) but the two leads were the standouts.

What happened with Watergate was a complex deal, as you'll discover if you look into it. Yet Goldman's script managed to make the story easy enough to follow where you are never lost as all the different pieces of that machine were shown. Those that enjoyed The Post definitely should check this out; Katharine Graham is name-dropped in one scene but Ben Bradlee (as played by Tom Hanks in that film, Jason Robards here) is a key supporting character in President's Men as the executive editor of the Washington Post. What a few years Bradlee had between being involved in that battle to make public The Pentagon Papers and defending two of his reporters and their shocking story of corruption at the highest level.

Oh, and if you loved Spotlight then you should check this out too as they share many similarities.