"All the President's Men" is a film that would have played much, much better back in the 70s when it debuted. That is because most of the audience would have known who many of the folks were who were involved in the Watergate break-in and the subsequent attempt to derail the investigations. As a history teacher, I have a much better than normal knowledge of these people and events. But for the average viewer who isn't in their 60s, much of the film will be foreign to them and the names relatively unimportant. Now this does not mean it's a bad film for most viewers--but its impact is less-- especially since nowadays the idea of politicians being this corrupt is old news!

The film has a lot of high-powered actors--not just Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford (who, by the way, looks NOTHING like Bob Woodward) but the stellar supporting cast. Additionally, the film is appropriately tense and well directed. The only negative I felt that existed in the film is the montage-like ending which just felt a bit like a tack-on and could have been stronger. Still, well worth seeing.

The United States Of America lost its political innocence with the Watergate scandals. The effects of what happened starting with those burglars caught breaking into the Democratic headquarters of the Watergate Apartment complex and what came afterward will damage the national psyche for the next few centuries.

What always got me about Watergate is that it was so unnecessary for Richard Nixon's re-election. And that was what it was all about. Nixon was at the peak of popularity, he would have won in 1972 without all the shenanigans pulled by his Committee to Re-Elect the President. But in the possessed mind of Richard Nixon who saw enemies everywhere, it wasn't enough to just beat the Democratic opponent.

It was also why the Watergate scandal took hold, the motives behind it were strictly political, to re-elect the incumbent president. Iran/Contra never got the traction that Watergate got because in the final analysis it was about foreign policy differences. The motives if not pure were not tainted with partisanship either.

Films like Nixon with Anthony Hopkins and Nixon/Frost with Frank Langella give you a view of the man at the center of it all. Another rather skewered view of Watergate can be gotten from the film Born Again about Chuck Colson, one of the key players in Watergate. But this film is from the outside looking in. It takes two fairly new reporters from the Washington Post, Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein, covering the police beat of the Post who are in night court as the Watergate burglars are arraigned and slowly realize they could be sitting on the story of a lifetime.

Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are Woodward and Bernstein. Editor Ben Bradlee played by Jason Robards realizes that in the final analysis this is a crime story first and foremost. So rather than give it to some top political reporter, he lets Woodward and Bernstein run with it. It made their reputations down to today.

Director Alan J. Pakula made clever use of the color newsreel footage and interspersed it with the dramatic story. Through the newsreels the well known names and faces actually do become actors in the proceedings.

In fact despite the fact that Jason Robards won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Jane Alexander for playing the bookkeeper at the campaign headquarters got nominated for Best Supporting Actress, the key performance in the film in my opinion is that of Robert Walden who played Donald Segretti, a young attorney who became part of the White House plumbers dirty tricks squad. He's the only one of the Watergate principals who gets a full blown fictional portrayal here. He gives the Watergate scandal the face for the viewer and its not a pretty one.

All The President's Men missed the Best Picture Oscar and a Best Director for Alan J. Pakula. But it managed to win Oscars for Best Sound, Best Art&Set Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay besides the Oscar Robards won.

Both Redford and Hoffman who are a couple of name players as stars gave what would be subdued performances in the sense that they never allowed their star personas to interfere with the telling of the story. That's what makes All The President's Men such a lasting classic.

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN is not only a stunning addition to the 1970s wave of conspiracy thrillers but also a great film dealing with the subject of journalism, up there with SPOTLIGHT as the best of its type. The story, which all true and about how two Washington Post reporters broke the Watergate scandal, is completely riveting, one of those suspense-fuelled movies that works despite not relying on generic action cliches or even an exciting score. The completely likeable Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffmann are perfectly cast as the intrepid reporters who refuse to take no for an answer, but the whole cast is spot on here. It's a film which just runs and runs and runs, ever complex yet easy to follow, that might just be one of the most important movies of the decade.