Based on Woodward and Bernstein's bestselling book and released only two years after
Nixon's resignation, "All the President's Men" chronicles the two reporters' investigation of the
infamous money trail leading from the burglars' court arraignment and notations in two of their
notebooks to White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and to a conspiracy which, as the reporters
would discover, went far beyond a simple attempt to plant bugs at the national Democratic
headquarters, and was chiefly engineered through the Republican Committee to Re-Elect the President
(appropriately acronymed "CReeP"). While the events are somewhat streamlined and not all of the
individuals actually involved in the conspiracy are mentioned - wisely so, as even the information
that is given takes either several viewings of the film or a close reference to the underlying book
to be fully digested - the movie faithfully depicts the events as they are described in the two
reporters' account.

Woodward and Bernstein were an unlikely match; both regarding their
personalities and their respective backgrounds: Woodward an Illinois native, Yale graduate and
former naval officer with upper-crust ties, only nine months with the Post when the Watergate story
broke; Bernstein a D.C. native and college dropout with liberal leanings, who had worked his way up
in the business from age sixteen onwards. Yet, over time they not only came to be friends but
actually worked together so closely that their colleagues took to addressing them collectively as
"Woodstein." Equally unlikely was their staffing on the Watergate story, as neither of them was a
senior journalist with the Washington Post, nor were they on steady assignment with its national
desk. Yet, largely due to patronage by the paper's Metro Editor, as well as eventually Executive
Editor Ben Bradlee, they were able to pursue their investigation to its very end.

Starring as
Bernstein and Woodward are Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford (who had purchased the film rights to
the story shortly after the book's publication and is also one of the movie's co-producers). Both
actors performed a tremendous amount of research for their roles, which enabled them not only to
perfectly portray the two lead characters - and this although Redford in particular has virtually no
physical resemblance to Woodward - but also to convey their tenacity in pursuing a story that even
their own colleagues at first didn't want to believe, and in whose development they were hampered at
every corner. Similarly, Jason Robards, who won a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar and several other
awards for his role as Ben Bradlee, convincingly nails the famous newsman's mix of New England
pedigree and tough talk; and Jack Warden, Martin Balsam and Hal Holbrook are equally compelling as
Metro Editor Harry Rosenfeld, Managing Editor Howard Simons and Woodward's only recently-revealed,
profoundly clandestine source "Deep Throat." Outstanding in a cast featuring dozens of actors are
further Jane Alexander as bookkeeper and reluctant source Judy Hoback, Ned Beatty as Florida
prosecutor Martin Dardis, Stephen Collins as former Haldeman aide and CReeP treasurer Hugh Sloan,
Robert Walden as California attorney/smear campaign organizer Donald Segretti and Penny Fuller as
Woodward's and Bernstein's colleague Sally Aiken, who uses her personal contacts to provide crucial
CReeP insider information. (Plus, watch out for F. Murray Abraham's brief appearance as one of the
arresting officers at the Watergate.)

What makes "All the President's Men" so compelling are, of
course, first and foremost the true facts of the underlying story; the sheer enormity of a
conspiracy constituting nothing less than a full-fledged attack on the electoral process and on the
very foundations of the American democracy, and involving the entire U.S. intelligence community and
almost all of the Republican establishment, up to and including former President Nixon.
Appropriately, the movie is styled in the way of a documentary, resisting all temptations to hype
the events and relying entirely on its stellar cast and on the authenticity provided by its D.C.
location shots, by the recreation of the Washington Post's newsroom (with numerous props supplied by
the paper itself), and by actual TV footage from the era. And although David Shire is credited for
his soundtrack contribution, the film's most memorable sounds are not those of his almost
non-audible score but the hammering of the reporters' typewriters, of the news ticker announcing the
story's final developments, and of the gunshot- and whiplash-enforced pounding of the opening
caption. Not surprisingly, the movie also won the Academy Award for Best Sound, in addition to
Robards's and those for Best Writing (William Goldman, with input from Carl Bernstein and his former
wife Nora Ephron) and Best Art Direction. Why it didn't also win the "Best Movie" award, I will
never understand. (Rocky who?!)

"Nothing's riding on this except the First Amendment of the
Constitution, the freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country," Ben Bradlee tells
Woodward and Bernstein after their investigation has almost faltered over a misunderstanding with
two sources regarding Haldeman's involvement, and he adds: "Not that any of that matters. But if you
guys [mess] up again, I'm going to get mad ..." They didn't give him reason to. And the rest, as the
saying goes, is history - hopefully never to be repeated, anywhere in the world.