The film version of the fall of Richard Nixon

Rating: 7/10 (23 September 2011)

This movie is based on the Watergate incident and follows two reporters, Woodwood (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman, who is very young here) as they try to find the big story behind this incident. This movie is more of a historical narrative than a thematic movie. It explores the nature of how the government covered up an embarrassing incident where the Republican Re-election committee had the offices of the Democrats bugged, but were caught before the bugs were laid. The incident happened in 1971, and went through Nixon's re-election campaign. It was after Nixon was re-elected that everything was revealed and an embarrassing President had to resign. This is a good movie in the sense that it follows the events of how Woodwood and Bernstien continued to dig into the Watergate incident even though there was a lot of opposition. It gives us a clear idea of what happened during the event, even though there is probably a bit of Hollywood extravagance connected with it. This movie has been listed in my American History notes as one to watch and what makes it even more interesting is that is was made very close to the event, that is 1976. This is different to a lot of other such historical movies like JFK as it is very close to the time it happened, at a time when people began to distrust the government due to the event. It isn't a movie trying to encourage us to trust the government, but rather a movie that uses a real incident to remind us that if an oppressive government does come in then we can be assured that it will not remain.