Just follow the money

Rating: 10/10 (17 July 2001)

Lengthy and full of details but nevertheless one of the greatest movies ever made, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN still manages to work even twenty-five years after its release.
As we all know, this film revolves around the efforts of Carl Bernstein (Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Redford) of the Washington Post to get at the truth behind that little "third-rate burglary" that happened at the Watergate building in the early morning hours of June 17, 1972. Bit by little bit, a disturbing puzzle forms. With some assistance from Redford's shadowy secret source known as Deep Throat (Holbrook), who tells Redford "Just follow the money", the two men find a trail of lies, threats, electronic surveillance, and other forms of political chicanery that lead right to the Executive Office Building of the White House, whose occupant of course was Richard M. Nixon.
Watergate, as they were to find out, was only part of a vast conspiracy within the entire U.S. intelligence community to sabotage not only the Democrats during the '72 election but to also crush ANY opposition of ANY kind to Nixon. Once this whole thing was unraveled, it led to Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974, the first time a president ever stepped down in disgrace (and, if we're lucky, the last).
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN is a combination of political drama and character study that remains compulsively watchable to this day. Jason Robards won a justly-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the Post's avuncular editor Ben Bradlee, and William Goldman won Best Adapted Screenplay. Also featured here in extremely effective roles are Martin Balsam, Jack Warden, Robert Walden, and Ned Beatty. The fine direction of Alan J. Pakula (KLUTE) is the icing on the cake.
For a follow-up to this story, look for THE FINAL DAYS, a 2 1/2 hour TV movie based on the second Watergate book by "Woodstein" that looks at Nixon's tumultuous collapse of power prior to his resignation. In the meantime, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN ranks a solid and unequivoal 10.