Review of All the President's Men (1976) by Familiar S — 04 Jan 2009

The ultimate in investigative journalism pictures, the scoop of the century - as written by William Goldman and directed by Alan J. Pakula - continually pleases for the entertaining intelligence at work. It is among the most gripping, deft, and utterly compelling of thrillers, and this despite being based on well-known facts whose conclusion is never in doubt.

Following a break-in at the Watergate complex, Washington Post newspaper reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) attends the low-key arraignment of the burglars and sniffs a mystery. Defying men in the corridors of power, with the support of editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards, winning the first of his two consecutive Oscars) and the melodramatic tipster Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), Woodward and his thrusting colleague Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) doggedly get the goods on dirty tricks electioneering and its shameful cover-up conspiracy, ultimately leading them all the way to the White House and the ignominious resignation of President Richard Nixon. A satirist couldn't have concocted better villians then CREEP (The Committee to Re-Elect the President) and its schemers in this sorry story turned into a hopeful, heroic crusade, the real Woodward and Bernstein benefiting ever after from their identification with the decidedly more lustrous Redford and Hoffman.