Great actors, great story, great profession. Great film.

Rating: 10/10 (13 February 2005)

This superb, engrossing film starts with a cloudy, white screen; presumably a depressing sky over Washington DC back in 1972. It's all doom and gloom. Then, suddenly, just when you were relaxing BANG BANG BANG The tremendous noise sounds like a shot from a rifle, and it makes you jump. But it's not a rifle, of course; it's the sound of a typewriter bar striking what turns out to be a blank sheet of paper; the major theme of the film is the power of journalism and the (type) written word. It is June 1, 1972.
One of the primary motifs of this brilliant Pakula film is the production of text, and this is back in the days of typewriters and paper, lots of it. Woodward and Bernstein are often shown at their desks working on text. It is the Washington Post, after all, and it was their text that destroyed Richard Nixon.
The film is also about detective work and you get to see investigative research carried out at the Library of Congress (with a brilliant shot where the camera withdraws from above, the two at work on enormous batches of library slips, drawing right up to the ceiling  how did they film that?  until the two almost disappear, just two tiny people sat at a desk, buried in detail).
The music is by David Shire and is superb. Everything else is brilliant, too.
There are 'crazy Cubans', crooked attorneys, district attorneys, and brilliant editorial team at the Washington Post, and all the drama of exposing corruption in the White House. Strangely, there is no Richard Nixon in this film, other than on newsreel footage, appearing at Congress, etc. The story is told from the viewpoint of Woodward and Bernstein and their newspaper.
It is a truly great film, typical of the 1970s.