016 - All The President's Men (1976)

DVD Box

The Watergate scandal is without a doubt the cover up on the largest scale in the United States of America. In order to protect the scandal to the fullest, President Nixon resigned from office - the first, and only, President to do so in American history.

All The President's Men is based on the book of the same name written shortly after the details of the scandal were outed. In fact, so contemporary were the events, that it rivals films such as The Social Network for the amount of damage that it could do to the reputations of people so high up.

Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play two Washington Post reporters who have just found out about the break-in in the Watergate building who discover that there may be more to the story than meets the eye.

All The President's Men covers many themes from this point of view - from freedom of the press, to high political dramas, to the story telling of contemporary events.

Theatrical Poster

All of the drama in the film is played so well by Redford and Hoffman that the ending was rather disappointing - just as the film had reached the pinnacle of the scandal, it seemed to say "and the rest was history". Of course, at the time of the film's release - a mere four years after the scandal - the story would have still been fresh in the mind of many Americans and it would no doubt have been interesting to see it from the point of view where reporters were constantly finding developments.

Unfortunately, as a 20-something in the 21st Century, I was unaware of the exact details (my only prior knowledge had come from a quick escapade around Wikipedia a few hours before watching the film) so the ending was very final.

Despite this, the story is told superbly - drawing the audience in from the start. Just make sure you do your background reading first.

• Empire Review
• Internet Movie Database
• Wikipedia
• Amazon