All the President's Men

Based on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s best-seller about cracking the byzantine Watergate cover-up, the movie is a victory lap for American journalism — the triumphant flip side to Network‘s self-loathing take on the media. Read full review

This edgy but highly polished movie established the modern myth of journalists-as-heroes: crusaders in the service of the Constitution. [14 Nov 2008, p.C7]

A riveting, superbly acted political thriller. Read full review

One of modern American film’s most intelligent and provocative accounts of a nation’s political failings, and a near-perfect depiction of journalism at its purist and most inspired. To be more succinct, it is quite brilliant. Read full review

Despite the twists, turns and exceptionally complex detail of the Watergate scandal, All the President’s Men manages to make it both comprehensible and watchable – with a few flashy fictional touches to gussy up the facts. Read full review

The manners and methods of big-city newspapering, beautifully detailed, contribute as much to the momentum of the film as the mystery that's being uncovered. Maybe even more, since the real excitement of All The President's Men is in watching two comparatively inexperienced reporters stumble onto the story of their lives and develop it triumphantly, against all odds. Read full review

Alan J. Pakula has succeeded brilliantly in converting that outworn myth into a brand-new myth that conforms to our time. Pakula drives moral and ideological meanings straight to your nervous system by the rhythms of his imagery and editing. But Pakula is subtler, less melodramatic. Redford and Hoffman really are ordinary guys doing an ordinary job. But film shows how their tenacity, their doggedness, become under pressure much more than mere professional virtues. [05 Apr 1976, p.85]

Some ingenious direction by Alan J. Pakula and scripting by William Goldman remove much of the inherent dramatic lethargy in any story of reporters running down a story. Read full review

Drawn from the true adventures of the Washington Post reporters and their illustrious editor Ben Bradlee, the movie heroically recounts the dogged journalistic sleuthing that cracked the story of the Watergate break-in and cover-up. Read full review

The ingeniousness of screenwriter William Goldman and director Alan J. Pakula’s film is that it’s framed as a detective mystery. Read full review

Screenwriter William Goldman's excellent craftsmanship made what could have been an insular political saga into a captivating detective story, earning him an Academy Award. And director Alan Pakula, relying on director Costa-Gavra's 1969 political thriller Z as his inspiration, created an absorbing study of the criminal arrogance that power can incite. [01 Dec 2002, p.9]

It provides the most observant study of working journalists we're ever likely to see in a feature film. And it succeeds brilliantly in suggesting the mixture of exhilaration, paranoia, self-doubt, and courage that permeated the Washington Post as its two young reporters went after a presidency. Read full review

All the President’s Men’s masterstroke is how it rejects mythologizing the pivotal history behind it, appropriately forgoing a climax by closing on a simple telex furiously relaying messages. The film doesn’t present two underdogs bringing down a president; it’s two reporters doing business as usual. Read full review

The film features a host of fine character portrayals and a compelling climax that compensates for its length. Read full review

Within the stylistic limits and shortened time span the filmmakers have decided to use, All the President's Men is an exceptionally well-made film. It's simply impossible to suppress the feeling that a more involving and satisfying movie would have emerged from a less restrictive framework. Read full review

One has the impression that Goldman realized you can push a good thing just so far, or that audiences will follow reportorial plotting just so long. Read full review

Inevitably softened by hints of self-congratulation concerning the success of Woodward and Bernstein's uncovering of the Watergate affair, Pakula's film is nevertheless remarkably intelligent, working both as an effective thriller (even though we know the outcome of their investigations) and as a virtually abstract charting of the dark corridors of corruption and power. Read full review

Alan Pakula's pedestrian 1976 recap of Watergate is a study in missed opportunities. Read full review