The story behind the story

Rating: 8/10 (29 November 2012)

It is a story which the final outcome is a well-known fact. The case of the 37th President of the United States in Richard Nixon resigning from his post, before Nixon's former vice-president Gerald Ford took over. It is the story of Watergate, and the two Washington Post reporters who will come to be known for their reports. It is based on the book of the same name written by the two reporters from the Washington Post at the time of Watergate in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who would come to uncover what, would lead to the eventual resignation of Nixon.
It is June 1972. There was a break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex. The young Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) was assigned to cover the story at the courthouse and began to establish the identities and the backgrounds of the five who were caught in the break-in. It would lead him to conclude the five were being connected with E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA employee and Charles Colson, the special counsel to the president Richard Nixon. As the break-in would become more than just how it looked on the surface and took on a more political twist to it, Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) would come to be assigned to the story as well, along with the colleague he only knew briefly before in Woodward.
Woodward and Bernstein went from being reluctant partners to collaborating well together, following up on the two men (Hunt and Colson) in connection with the five burglars. The Post's executive editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) was not convinced what Woodward and Bernstein had uncovered so far to be deemed worthy of being on the front page, and encouraged them to uncover more information. Among the sources who were willing to talk to the duo assigned to cover the story apart from those who refused to divulge details or slammed them or the Post in various ways all coming at a time when Nixon would be undergoing a re-election campaign and was guaranteed to beat his Democratic opponent George McGovern, there is an anonymous source whom Woodward had used before and trusted who goes by the codename of Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook).
As it shows throughout the course of the film, which was released two years after the resignation of Nixon and the publication of the book which formed the basis of the film of the same name, there is nothing glamorous in terms of the process Woodward and Bernstein went through before getting their reports to be on the Post. Doors getting slammed in their faces, the doubts from the various Post editors on the sources Woodward and Bernstein had used in their reports including Deep Throat.
Watching the film, it is also a reminder of the press at its best. Watch it as a reminder of a time of how it was in Woodward and Bernstein's day. It is a film for fans of American politics and contemporary American history, those who like a little sense of adventure and suspense in films, and definitely recommended for students of media and aspiring journalists.