The grandaddy of all the great journalism movies, adapted from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s seminal 1974 account of their reporting. The recently late Robert Redford as Woodward, Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee. Truth be told, it’s just ever so slightly overrated, but only for plot and pacing issues. The acting and dialogue are excellent as is the direction by Alan Pakula. All that combine to do all the heavy lifting for a plot that is often difficult to parse. You hardly ever notice that you’re lost on things like why Donald Segretti telling Bernstein about his “ratfucking” operation was so important to the early phases of the overall quest to uncover Nixon’s abuses. The scene is still excellent. To be fair All The President’s Men had an audience in 1976 far more familiar with the names and their significance than some of us born a decade later.
Fun trivia: The Washington Post staff shipped crates full of office paper and binders to use as props on the newsroom set built in Los Angeles. Watergate security guard Frank Wills – whose eye for pieces of tape being placed to prevent doors from locking set in motion the implosion of Richard Nixon’s presidency – plays himself in the brief glimpses of the break-in during the film’s open.