DVD Reviews

All the President’s Men - Blu-ray Review

By Jeff Swindoll Feb 18, 2011, 11:42 GMT

In the Watergate Building, lights go on and four burglars are caught in the act. That night triggered revelations that drive a U.S. President from office. Washington reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) grabbed the story and stayed with it through doubts, denials and discouragement. "All The President\'s Men" is their story. Directed by Alan J. Pakula and based on the Woodward/Bernstein book, the film won four ...more

You’d expect a film with someone called Deep Throat to be shown in a grindhouse theater, but when you’re dealing with the Nixon administration you still get dirty. 

Bob Woodward (Robert Redford, who also produced the movie) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) are low level reporters at the Washington Post.  One night there’s a burglary at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate Building.  Woodward is assigned to cover the arraignment of the burglars.  He finds out that the public defenders have found out that the four men already have a lawyer. 

During the arraignment he sees a mysterious man who refuses to answer his questions and basically says that he is not even there.  When one of the burglars says that he’s recently retired from the Central Intelligence Agency, Woodward’s reporters instinct kicks in and he smells a story.  Their editor (Jack Warden) assigns them both to the story. 

As they follow the story, they keep finding witnesses that just don’t want to talk to them.  Some of them even change their stories in the middle of their phone calls.  All the while, they’re trying to convince Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards), managing editor of the Washington Post, that the story is important.  Woodward also has a shadowy source nicknamed Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) that tells him that the story goes very high up.  Could the story reach all the way to the White House?

Who would guess that a movie about Watergate could turn out to be such a suspenseful film?  You know the outcome of the case, but you still are compelled to watch - even more so that today we actually know the identity of Deep Throat since he stepped out of the shadows. 

In the same way that Network shows us the behind-the-scenes doings of television, All the President’s Men shows up the workings of the newsroom.  Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman probably spawned more newspaper careers than Woodward and Bernstein. 

Of course they would as the working reporter is the hero of the piece.  Even better that they’re taking on a reviled President and taking him down therefore showing that the “little people” could take down the powerful with the well-researched news story.  I guess they’d just tweet it all now. 

All the President’s Men is presented in a 1080p high definition transfer (1.85:1).  Special features are presented in standard definition and include a commentary by Robert Redford, the 72 minute “Behind the Story” making of, a 7 minute clip of Jason Robards on the Dinah Shore Show, the 2 minute trailer, and the film is given the digibook treatment so you get pages of trivia and text. 

All the President’s Men is still a powerful film, but the newsroom is a thing of the past.  The film is chock full of suspense and fine acting from a great cast and the special features show you the great care that the filmmakers went through to get it right. 

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