All the President’s men couldn’t put Richard Nixon back together again. They actually made it worse by getting involved in one of the biggest cover ups in American history; a scandal that changed the average American’s perception on the presidency and its role in our lives. But All the President’s Men isn’t the story about the scandal, it is the story of the two talented journalists who stopped at nothing to uncover the truth and expose the lie of the century.
Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) is a young reporter working at The Washington Post. He is assigned to what seems to be an open and shut case: five men were found with bugging equipment inside the democratic national headquarters at Watergate Hotel. Woodward becomes suspicious when the defendants get a “country club attorney” working their case in the background. On further inspection Woodward finds that all five men have connections with the CIA.
Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), whose hair can only be described as “Greek god-like,” is a veteran reporter also working at The Post. He takes an interest in Woodward’s story and gets himself assigned to work with Woodward. The duo finds a trail that keeps leading deeper into the levels of the White House and the Committee to re-elect the President. Though their managing editor is initially reluctant to publish their findings, Woodward and Bernstein uncover enough evidence and sources to blow wide open a presidential crime.
All the President’s Men is a fantastic film. It has a running time of 138 minutes, in which nothing really exciting actually happens. There are no gunfights and no car chases but every new piece of evidence uncovered is as thrilling to the audience as it was to the men who found them. This can be attributed to the two wonderful leads. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are both major movie stars, but it doesn’t feel that way. They are very subdued in their acting which transforms them into the characters they are portraying. I wasn’t aware that I was watching Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman; I was watching Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward do their jobs.
And do their jobs they did. All the President’s Men gets the journalistic process right. The duo (referred to playfully by their editor as Woodstein) don’t just assume that the White House did something wrong. They worked off that assumption to uncover some serious facts. They called people on the phone, they met up with various sources that worked close to the men involved, they went to the Library of Congress to do their own research and they interviewed people who had obviously been scared into keeping quiet. The story could practically write itself. The amount of speculation that could easily be read into the situation must have been tempting. But even when they had enough sources their managing editor sent them out for more: more sources, more evidence and more confrontation. Exposing a conspiracy like this takes a lot of work and Woodstein wasn’t just satisfied with being pretty sure, they needed to be positive that what they knew was the truth.
Although All the President’s Men is about the journalism behind the Watergate scandal, the film leaves out an important conclusion: the aftermath of the story. The film ends with a series of typewriters punching away different dates showing the story continued for years after its discovery. But the audience never gets to see Nixon’s resignation, the ultimate culmination of Woodward and Bernstein’s work. Everyone knows that the resignation is what the film is working towards and not showing it is a huge letdown after all of the buildup.
Aside from that one minor detail, All the President’s Men is a perfect film. It is a history lesson that comes off not as boring, but as one of the most important stories you may ever hear. It should be required viewing for all United States students and it is a shame it took me so long to see it.
4 out of 4 stars
-Christopher O’Connell
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