Vice president...

Rating: 8/10 (21 October 2009)

I've had this movie taped for a long time and kept putting off the pleasure I knew I'd get from viewing it until I was sparked by recently watching Kevin MacDonald's excellent modern-day fictional journalistic thriller "State of Play" to find Pakula's 70's drama put forward as an inspiration and for some scenes, indeed, a template for his film. Also as a young man in the 70's I remember avidly reading the source book by Wood-stein, the composite abbreviation for the two investigative journalists, add to which I'm a fan of Pakula's socially conscious but detached style anyway (especially "The Parallax View" from a couple of years earlier) so that I gladly settled in for the night to view this lengthy feature.
Like his earlier "Klute" and "The Parallax View", Pakula gets your attention straight away with an arresting opening image - this time that gun-shot type report that the typewriter makes as it hammers out the dateline for the action which is about to follow. The thing is of course that this would have been almost as good a film as it turns out to be even if the events portrayed were fictional, but of course there's that extra frisson knowing that the events and people depicted are real and contemporary.
The star-power of the two leads could also have blown credibility out of the water but whilst you're pretty much always aware that it's Redford & Hoffman you're watching, nevertheless they unquestionably fully immerse themselves in the parts, especially as they beetle about the everyday, frustrating, often boring part of being a reporter. They're backed by a top-rate supporting cast, prominent amongst these being Jason Robards, Ned Beatty & Martin Balsam. The environment of a big newspaper office is especially well conveyed in the sprawling working area.
The cinematography, as usual with Pakula, is first rate, particularly the night shots of Redford/Woodward's encounters with the mysterious "Deep Throat" in the underground car park. Pakula keeps giving us the same long-shot of Redford's tiny figure going downstairs into the car park, which, mythical connotations apart, only further emphasises his smallness against the scale of the giant task he and his paper are taking on. The attention to detail is particularly gripping, the way that the journalists check and cross-verify their sources before daring to go to print - who'd have thought a newspaper procedural could be so involving.
The main reason for this of course is the prize at the end of the trail as Woodward and Bernstein, in the famous phrase "follow the money" all the way to Tricky Dicky Nixon's White House culminating in his resignation and the conviction and imprisonment of most of his underlings. The only thing I didn't like really was the, to me, rushed finish. Even as I got the irony in Nixon's televised acceptance speech in early 1973 playing on a newsroom TV while the reporters keep typing, obviously continuing the investigation until the purge of the president's men is complete, it felt forced. Archive footage of Nixon and Agnew is used elsewhere in the film and therefore I can't think why Nixon's famous televised speeches as the case engulfed him, particularly his resignation speech, were ignored. There's no single moment where the link to Nixon (and his infamous White House tapes) is made which I hope wasn't made out of expediency.
That carp apart, this film was one of the dramatic highlights of 70's Hollywood movie-making representing bravery on the part of its producers (Redford amongst them) to get out there this defiant defence of freedom of speech and the press in gone-wrong 70's America. Hail to the thief indeed!