Just "Follow the Money" and see the Most Powerful (Yet Seemingly Fictional) Political Thriller!

Rating: 8/10 (14 June 2017)

"All the President's Men" may be more historically inaccurate than accurate but it sure details a depth of political corruption at the time seemed unfathomable. Doesn't mean one can actually do less these days though, but when people seem to be genuinely pleased that newspapers are indeed dying, what they are essentially saying is that one of major tools to monitor the proper workings of government is no longer necessary. Thus, corruption can continue unchecked, democracy eroded even further.
When I first watched this film, that's over 20 years after it's release. I had no idea about any of the details of Watergate whatsoever. I mean, I was a mare child in some classy school in London.
Over 30 years before that was, Richard Nixon, impeached for spying on and sabotaging his political rivals and it all came to light because a handful of burglars got caught breaking into National Democratic Headquarters, which were located in an apartment complex known as "Watergate". The story was revealed due to a couple of reporters at the Washington Post, Woodward and Bernstein. That's it, that's all I knew. I didn't even know Woodward and Bernstein's first names. Just the bare minimum (I mean, I think ANY American should know that much, no? But I'm 150% English. With added 50% of USA and rising? that's 200% from both worlds).
Here's the thing though. It doesn't matter that you don't know who Bob Haldeman was, you'll figure out enough of what's going on via context, and then the rest of the movie will work its magic on you. By the time the credits roll you'll be saying, that was so awesome, even though you still couldn't tell me what John Ehrlichmans title was at the White House. I've explained the level of complexity in the story as way of illustrating all the challenges this movie overcomes. What winds up happening isn't that the complexity overwhelms the viewer the viewer picks up on the necessary elements and enjoys the movie, while the Watergate-knowledgeable viewer winds up having a film full of details and minutiae to cherish.
How do they do it? By focusing on the excitement of it. The adventure. All the President's Men is a thriller, people!! This is the greatest detective story of all time. Woodward and Bernstein were on a quest for the truth, and the truth was being protected by the most powerful people on the planet, with the full force of the government behind them!
Woodward and Bernstein slowly come together as a team, and then slowly come to realise exactly what they're dealing with. Their suspicion grows. Evidence mounts.
But as the story builds, so does the pressure. The stakes. Other newspapers are racing them to find the truth and to break the story first. People are trying to discredit them. At one point, their editor, Ben Bradlee (portrayed by Jason Robards, who won an Academy Award for this role) tell them, Were under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothings riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys f*ck up again, Im going to get mad. Goodnight.
He wasn't exaggerating, either.
Had the Nixon Whitehouse succeeded in blocking their investigation and remained in power, who knows what the consequences would have been for the press. It certainly wouldn't have boded well for the Washington Post, as Nixon most assuredly would have done everything in his power to bring them down."All the President's Men" is truer to the craft of journalism than to the art of storytelling, and that's its problem. The movie is as accurate about the processes used by investigative reporters as we have any right to expect, and yet process finally overwhelms narrative -- we're adrift in a sea of names, dates, telephone numbers, coincidences, lucky breaks, false leads, dogged footwork, denials, evasions, and sometimes even the truth. Just such thousands of details led up to Watergate and the Nixon resignation, yes, but the movie's more about the details than about their results.
That's not to say the movie isn't good at accomplishing what it sets out to do. It provides the most observant study of working journalists we're ever likely to see in a feature film (Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein may at last, merciful God, replace Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns as career models). And it succeeds brilliantly in suggesting the mixture of exhilaration, paranoia, self-doubt, and courage that permeated the Washington Post as its two young reporters went after a presidency.
Newspaper movies always used to play up the excitement and ignore the boredom and the waiting. This one is all about the boredom and the waiting and the tireless digging; it depends on what we already know about Watergate to provide a level of excitement. And yet, given the fact that William Goldman's screenplay is almost all dialogue, almost exclusively a series of scenes of people talking (or not talking) to each other, director Alan J. Pakula has done a remarkable job of keeping the pace taut.
Does History still repeats itself?