All the President's Men

For those of you who watched 'The Post' a few years ago when it was released (Starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks), this is the other side of the story. Some people will say that 'The Post' is a remake of this film but having now seen both films, it isn't.

Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman star in this film about the Watergate Scandal. I will say right now that unless you were living at the time of this scandal, the film doesn't really make sense. 'The Post' revealed that Nixon knew that they couldn't win the Vietnam War. Documents were leaked and The Washington Post amount other papers had to fight the legal system to publish the documents. This film seems to be more focused on money that was paid from the presidential election campaign fund to high up members of the senate in order to keep Watergate a secret.

The film starts with a break in. 5 men are arrested for breaking in and attempting to locate and steal documents. A lawyer is provided for these men even though none of them called for one and that leads the reporters from The Washington Post to start writing a story on it. They discover that one of the burglars had a name of someone from the White House written in his diary and they go from there. Redford and Hoffman work together and spend the entire movie clutching at straws. They don't get any positive confirmations and they cannot reveal their sources. The film doesn't really end and when the closing credits roll you sit there thinking... then what?

After they publish a story stating that five high up members of senate or even higher were involved in paying off people and shredding documents they discover that they have been bugged from the start and that whilst they weren't wrong, they also weren't correct in everything that they wrote. Nixon gets reelected and you can't help but feel like they have wasted their time, money and effort and that you as the audience have also done the same thing.

The stars in this movie guaranteed it to be a box office hit. The plot was probably impacted by what they could say and write at the time. This movie was made in 1976, about 2 years after this scandal had taken place and therefore was still very much on people's minds. The problem is that if you didn't live through it, watching this film doesn't give you any concrete knowledge about anything that took place. I can see why 'The Post' was made. That film is a lot clearer about what was going on and what the papers were trying to achieve and write. Once you combine them with 'Frost/Nixon' then you can start to form a clear idea of what had taken place, if, like me; you were not born at the time of this scandal and did not learn about it in school history.

I still sit here wondering if I actually managed to work out the plot from this film just by watching the film. If there is anyone out there reading this post who can explain the plot of this film to me then please comment on this post and explain it to me.

Until next time.