All the President's Men
Published June 20, 2021
Film info
- Title All the President's Men
- Director Alan J. Pakula
- Year 1976
- Run time 2hrs 18m
- Genres History, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
- Tagline The most devastating detective story of this century
History comes alive in this supremely entertaining film that garnered eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play Woodward and Bernstein, the intrepid newspaper reporters who broke open the Watergate scandal and toppled a President.
Live blog
| Time | Comment |
|---|---|
| 8:04 | That was quite engrossing, even though we knew what was going to happen! |
| 9:09 | “Are you here in connection with the Watergate burglary?” “I’m not here.” |
| 16:22 | I just don’t think I have the logic to follow a trail like this! |
| 22:14 | You have to be able to take copy editing as a journalist, surely? |
| 31:48 | It’s Ben Bradlee! Tom Hanks but older. |
| 37:52 | Meeting at night in the deserted parking garage is absolutely terrifying. |
| 46:02 | She is a very good secretary, to be fair. |
| 50:35 | So many phone calls! |
| 55:33 | Bradlee just loves to put his feet up. |
| 1:00:09 | Deep Throat isn’t that much better than Garage Freak. |
| 1:15:22 | It’s clever, to get inside someone’s home and ask the innocent questions that break the ice. |
| 1:24:39 | She didn’t even want him to come in the house and he managed to stay there six hours??? |
| 1:35:46 | “I can’t do the reporting for my reporters which means I have to trust them. And I hate trusting anyone.” |
| 1:51:09 | I like someone saying I’ve forgotten the entire incident but… |
| 2:00:19 | So impressed with how you can get people to say things without saying anything. |
| 2:12:45 | “Nothing’s riding on this except the First Amendment of the Constitution, Freedom of the Press, and maybe the future of the country.” |
Thoughts
In order to flush the horror of Sixteen Candles from our minds, we opted for something completely different. The two main reasons for watching this are that we knew The Post ended with a hand on the doorhandle about to discover the Watergate burglary, a prequel of sorts, and that Hilde Lisko from Home Before Dark is obsessed with this film for its portrayal of journalism.
It was brilliant from that point of view. Two incredible actors doing a stand up job, bouncing off each other, never being dissuaded from their main cause despite lots of difficulties. A great surrounding cast of characters too, and of course, always in the back of the mind, that this is true, that it is so high stakes, and just so interesting.
The only problem with it, was there was a lot of implied knowledge and me as the history buffoon that I am didn’t always follow the intricacies of the plot. Made so soon after the events themselves, they didn’t need to do quite so much explaining as they might if they made a similar movie now. But still, an absolute stand-out five out of five.
Rating: 5 / 5