All the President’s Men, 1976.
Directed by Alan J. Pakula.
Starring Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, and Jason Robards.
SYNOPSIS:
All the President’s Men gets a satisfying 4K Ulttra HD release from Warner Bros. in time for its 50th anniversary. The film looks great, and the package includes a code for a digital copy. While the studio did include a pair of new featurettes, some of the legacy bonus features are missing, so keep that in mind when you decide whether to get rid of your older discs.
The Watergate scandal feels like a quaint time in American history these days. Richard Nixon was a rotten human being, but even he respected American institutions and understood when it was time to go. (And let’s not forget that he lost a close, contentious election to Kennedy in 1962 and presided over that electoral college certification (he was Eisenhower’s VP) without trying to derail it.)
With All the President’s Men celebrating its 50 anniversary this year, Warner Bros. has used that opportunity to issue its 4K Ultra HD debut. Based on the book of the same name, the film charts the nascent Watergate investigation by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, as it grew from a bungled burglary into a scandal that would take down a President.
Robert Redford plays Woodward and Dustin Hoffman assumes the role of Bernstein. Both of them give tour de force performances during a time when they were at the height of their acting skills. Alan J. Pakula directed the film from a script by William Goldman, and the story moves at a quick pace over its 138-minute running time; lose focus for a moment and you might miss a key piece of information.
The supporting cast is just as solid, with Hal Holbrook playing the shadowy source known as Deep Throat and Jason Robards and Martin Balsam as Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and managing editor Howard Simons, respectively.
Ned Beatty gets a nice scene as a Florida state investigator who provides some crucial information early in the investigation and F. Murray Abraham scored one of his early roles in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him part as an arresting officer. Dominic Chianese, who played Johnny Ola in The Godfather Part II and would later take the role of Junior on The Sopranos, is one of the Watergate burglars.
Warner Bros. has issued All the President’s Men as a single-disc release with a code for a digital copy. The picture quality is solid, with a filmic quality that contains a healthy amount of grain for a film of its vintage. The studio has a great track record of restorations in recent years, so fans will be pleased with this one.
On the bonus features front, you might want to hang onto your older discs, since not everything was ported over to this one. However, Warner Bros. did commission a pair of new retrospective featurettes running a little over 15 minutes total. Titled All the President’s Men: The Film and its Influence and Woodward and Bernstein: A Journalism Masterclass, they serve up interviews with CNN anchors Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, who look back on the film’s legacy and the ways in which it captured a typical newspaper newsroom of that era.
Moving on, we have a trio of legacy featurettes that run a little over an hour total: Woodward and Bernstein: Lighting the Fire, Telling the Truth About Lies, and Out of the Shadows: The Man Who Was Deep Throat. Narrated by Holbrook, the three of them focus on Woodward, Bernstein, and others who were active then; a standard making-of with the cast and crew; and a profile of Mark Felt, the Deputy Director of the FBI who outed himself as Deep Throat in 2005.
Jason Robards’ appearance on an episode of Dinah Shore’s 70s era talk show rounds out the platter. Unfortunately, there’s no theatrical trailer found here, and some key legacy extras including a commentary by Redford and a feature-length making-of are missing too, so you may want to hold onto your old discs.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
