Powerful, Thrilling, Explosive and Still Relevant

Rating: 10/10 (13 November 2010)

Based on the book of same name written by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the film version of "All the President's Men" is an account of the news coverage by The Washington Post on the Watergate scandal in 1972. Directed by Alan J.Pakula and one of the most important films ever made, this title is often mentioned in journalism classes and it is considered the greatest film about the press, and the students or future journalism students must see it and learn a lot from it.
It shows how to make a tiny little story into a big one; the ethical aspects of a coverage; all the journalists tricks, relationship with sources; the way difficult texts must be written and how to connect thousands of facts and references altogether without confusing your colleagues, the editor and the readers. The reporters work is really like the one made by detectives, it's a complete investigation and the movie screenplay knew that and it made an impressive report about the investigative journalism.
Bernstein and Woodward, the reporters who covered the story are played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, respectively and here we follow them from the day when the Watergate invasion happened and it was treated by the media as something irrelevant, of minor repercussion, until president Nixon's last day in the office resigning after his involvement in the scandal. In the middle of that comes the most interesting and dazzling aspect of the film and that is the whole investigation made by these two wonderful reporters, searching clues, questioning everyone involved directly or indirectly with the burglaries and the passionate commitment with the story that this young reporters have.
Also presented in the film is the day-by-day of a newsroom, the work relationship between journalists, editors (played by Martin Balsam, Jack Warden among others) and the executive-editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) who calls the shots of everything that comes out of the newspaper, interfering in the story when needed.
And at last but not least, on the top of the most precious aspect of the whole news coverage is Woodward's informant the mysterious Deep Throat (Hal Holblrook eclipsed in shadows), a confidential source who helped the story follow its path into the media as being one of the greatest politic scandals in America. Now everybody knows that he was an important FBI director but back then in 1972 only Woodstein (as the two reporters were called) knew who Deep Throat was. And the meeting scenes are very well made giving tension to the audience, everything they were doing was risky and the people involved with the scandal were very dangerous and since you couldn't trust in your own government in who will you trust? No one.
Pakula was a master in balance thriller and drama without disappoint the viewers in all movies he made, but here you got his best work. But I must thank writer William Goldman for finding the right way of presenting a story filled with references, names, situations without making something boring. The way Goldman dealt with such an complete and very hard to handle material was brilliant. It inspires journalists and future professionals of the area until today. But I advise you to make a research about everything involving the Watergate story if you never watched the film before because it involves a lot of political references and if you don't know one name you might get very lost, but nothing so compromising that makes you being pushed away from this classic.
Hoffman and Redford were at their best moment, both are great and there's no way you can compare who's best on scene, they're equally great. Jason Robars won the Oscar of Supporting Actor for playing the journalist mentor and chief, and every time I watch his performance here I found it better and better, an well deserved Oscar. Along with Robards's Oscar "All the President's Men" also won the award for Best Art-Direction, Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay (the second award for Goldman). Tough contender at that year along with "Taxi Driver" and "Network", these three wonderful films were wronged and lost out the top prize to "Rocky".
One of the clues that Woodward gets with Deep Throat about who were involved in the scheme is "Follow the money!". Looks like the Academy followed the money that year and gave the Best Picture Award to "Rocky" who had the biggest box-office in 1976. I like both movies but "All the President's Men" stands out for being more courageous, more powerful and still relevant to the date. 10/10