Country: United States
Genre: Drama/ Mainstream
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Year: 1976
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE
Reviewing All The President’s Men for this website provides me with a predicament. Sure, it’s a great movie, but it’s a far from trash as you can get. To me, All The President’s Men is thrilling, but there are no guns fired, no explosions, no nudity, no chase scenes, nothing mindless at all. It’s all talk, and literate talk at that. Readers who have had their senses dulled by an endless diet of CGI might well find it boring.
Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), two low level journalists at the Washington Post, stumble onto the story of the burglary of the Democratic National Headquarters and dig relentlessly at it, eventually uncovering a criminal conspiracy that reaches all the way into the White House and brings down a sitting President.
Probaby you think you know the story. Trust me, you don’t. This is the second time I’ve seen All The President’s Men. The first time was when it was in theaters. Even though the movie came out shortly after the Watergate scandal, and I had been reading articles on it for years, the movie succeeded in shedding light on the significance of the events. It was also very suspenseful, even though I knew how it turned out.
How on earth does All The President’s Men manage this? Well, this is a case of every department on a film working in absolute harmony. The film’s damned near perfect, which it had to be in order to work. The script by William Goldman is fantastic. It captures the nitty gritty, grunt on the ground reality of journalism, the frustration, the repetition, the detective work, the need for multiple sourcing of quotes. I know, it’s sounds as dull as watching mosquitos screw, but it’s not. The stars, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, were at the height of their powers as actors. And the depth of the acting talent is something to behold, down to the bit parts. Jason Robards, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jane Alexander, and Ned Beatty all do incredible work. Then there’s the art direction. The Washington Post newsroom is a thing of beauty. Woodward’s apartment has the stink of the real thing. I never doubted the truth of any of the locations. Then there’s director of photography Gordon Willis, known as the Prince of Darkness because he used shadows so much in his work. While never being obvious about it, Willis imbues the scenes of Woodward in underground parking garages or the reporting skulking about with a paranoid tension that makes you jump in your seat. Director Alan J. Pakula ties it all together with a laser like intensity and sense of purpose.
As if all that weren’t enough, All The President’s Men has a value beyond that of mere entertainment. It tells us about the value of the press to democracy, and of the hard work reporters do to uncover the truth. It shows us how the institutions of government can be turned against it’s citizens, a timely lesson if there ever was one.
All The President’s Men is educational, intelligent, and gripping. Highest recommendation.
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