Review of All the President's Men (1976) by Deron D — 22 Nov 2008

This is one great film. A fantastic political thriller which has some of the most famous scenes in film history, such as Woodward and Bernstein looking through Library rental documents as the camera slowly moves up and shows an ariel view of the building, and suddenly editing further up every few seconds, and of cousre the meetings in an underground car park with Woodward and a mysterious informer known as Deep Throat.

The Performances are bloody brilliant. So far, I have never seen a bad Dustin Hoffman (Bernstein) film, even his sillier films like Meet The Fockers are good. This may not be his best, but even then it is fantastic. Redford (Woodward) is equally as amazing as the other half of the reporting team and then there is Jason Robards truly gave everything he could in this film as the calm yet grumpy newspaper editor Ben Bradlee, who deserved his oscar. He is definaltly a great actor, but I prefered him in Magnolia and The St. Valentines Day Massacre.

The director, Alan J. Pakula, who also won an oscar for his fine work did an impressive job. He knew what he was doing and and clearly put all his effort into this. Each and every scene involves a not good, but spectacular choice of angles, my favourite being the ariel shot in the libary, as I have mentioned before. Other great and memorable angles are the camera's manuovers through the busy and claustraphobic offices and the close ups of the in use typewriters.

The pacing of this film is remarkable and memorable. It has slow, though still interesting scenes before moving into a fast paced, energetic scene. The film slowly unravels in an intriguing way.

The ending is good and memorable. Not for shocks but the effect it has on the viewer.

This is a very good film and I can see clearly why it is deemed a classic.