Damn the Consequences!

Rating: 10/10 (16 February 2006)

I can't imagine the thought of remaking this film. To begin with, the cast is amazing. You have Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Martin Balsam, Jason Robards, Jack Warden, Penny Fuller, Jane Alexander, Polly Holliday, Hal Holbrook, Valerie Perrine, Allyn Ann McLerie, Meredith Baxter Birney, Stephen Collins, Sloane Shelton, etc. Can you imagine a finer cast together? It would win a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble. The writing is also amazing as well. This is real life and based on a true story. Now that we know Deep Throat, we don't need somebody to make a remake of this film. You can't bring together a finer group of people. Alan Pakula is one of the finest directors. Sadly, it did not win Best Film. I don't know who it lost too but this film is still breathtaking, addictive, and always worth watching even with editing and dubbed language over some of the cursed words. Watching Redford and Hoffman play Woodward and Bernstein is like a great roller coaster ride. You don't want to watch but you can't imagine not at times. As journalists, they show the rigid dead ends of life before the computer age. Remember manual typewriters, no answering machines, library card catalogs, and paper records. The scene in which they are digging endlessly for receipts remind us of their hard work, sleepless nights, dead ends, answers from few brave souls who confessed about greed, money, lies, and corruption in our government. Imagine a simple burglary opened a Pandora's Box of American corruption. You still have to wonder about the people involved for real. Imagine yourself in their position or in Woodward and Bernstein who were brave, smart, and had the guts to do their journalistic jobs despite the consequences.