All the President's Men

There are some genres and types of films today that say if you even go near making a fantastical space opera then chances are elements of Star Wars or Flash Gordon will somehow make their way through. Watching the likes of Zodiac, Spotlight or State of Play will all in some way struggle to avoid comparisons to the grandfather of the investigative sub-genre, All the President's Men from 1976. In a time before investigative journalism fell foul of the internet and click-bait articles, All the President's Men is an almost nostalgically earnest depiction of the then recent Watergate scandal from 1972 and the journalists who exposed President Richard Nixon which resulted in him becoming the first US president to resign.

I must confess the Watergate scandal is not something I knew a great deal about beyond that scene in Forrest Gump or the dramatic clash in Frost/Nixon as I sat down to watch this. Oliver Stone's JFK, which I recently wrote about, did an excellent job in engaging the audience with a conspiracy theory many years after the events depicted but All President's Men was released just four years after Watergate. The event was fresh in public conscious at the time and unless you're familiar with this moment in history, this film might not be for you.

Robert Redford stars as Bob Woodward who had recently joined The Washington Post and is assigned to visiting the local courthouse to report on a minor story regarding a break-in at the Watergate complex, which is where the Democratic National Committee are based. The story starts to gain weight when reports of electronic bugging equipment are found and so Woodward, along with fellow colleague Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), start to uncover that their country's Republican president might be involved as he prepares for re-election.

Directed by Alan J. Pakula and also starring Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook and Martin Balsam, All the President's Men is another great example why the 1970s was possibly the best decade for films. The way it's shot, the way it sounds as the typewriters hammer in each letter (sounds weird but the Oscars rightfully awarded it for this) and how it's so sharply written makes for an engaging experience, but only if you know the background of Watergate.

It seems sacrilegious to say so but for anyone uninitiated with what Nixon did, this film will be about two reporters running off an endless list of names trying to build a case they can put to print. The film is dense with information that will satisfy those who are familiar with Watergate, particularly given the Mark Felt revelation in more recent years, but this is otherwise a film that doesn't make itself accessible for the casual viewer. That's not the film's fault per se but I believe it's worth noting today if Nixon didn't feature in your curriculum at school.

However, not wanting to end this on a negative note, All the President's Men will certainly be worth watching if you know this part of history and enjoy the other types of investigative films I mentioned at the start. It has all the makings of a great film, which it is, but unless you studied it's subject, prepare to do a little homework in advance.