All the President's Men 4K 1976 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

June 1972, Washington. At night, at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, police arrest a group of individuals who secretly entered the premises with listening devices. Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein begin their own investigation, and it soon becomes clear that the threads of the crime lead to the White House.

Review 4K Movie

On June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate complex, noticed signs of a break-in. The police arrived and arrested a group of five people who had apparently stumbled into the Democratic Party headquarters with special technical equipment. This group was later ironically dubbed the “plumbers' brigade,” hinting that their technical work (installing bugs, making copies) was aimed at leaking information.

All five were tried on charges of breaking and entering. One of the arrested men called himself a “fighter against communism.” Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward attended the trial and noted the unusual nature of the event. While gathering information about the burglars, he discovered that the detainees were connected to Howard Hunt, a former CIA employee who was working on Nixon's election team at the time. To complete the picture of Hunt, it should be added that during his time as a CIA employee, he took part in a number of exciting operations, and if the press is to be believed, there are even theories that he was privately present in Dallas at the time of the Kennedy assassination.

In their subsequent journalistic investigation, Bob Woodward and his colleague Carl Bernstein unraveled a whole web of abuses, machinations, and other violations of the law by high-ranking officials in both the Republican Party and the White House. The publications in the Washington Post sparked a political scandal of unprecedented proportions, resulting in a series of arrests, the initiation of Nixon's impeachment, and his resignation.

The secret of Woodward's unerring instinct for finding juicy facts lay not so much in his journalistic intuition as in his collaboration with an informant privy to all the secrets of power, whom Woodward jokingly called “Deep Throat.” Communication with the informant was carried out in the tradition of spy novels: Woodward would signal the need for a meeting by placing a red flag on his balcony, and the meetings themselves took place late at night in the dim light of an underground parking lot.

The tape recordings of conversations in the president's office, known only to a select few, played an almost pivotal role in Nixon's removal. As soon as information about the existence of the tapes leaked out, the prosecution requested them in court.
The recordings revealed statements by the president that he had attempted to obstruct the investigation—this was enough to convince even the Republican members of Congress to vote for his impeachment.

The name of the mysterious informant was kept secret for more than 30 years, until Mark Felt, who served as deputy director of the FBI during Watergate, made the relevant confession in 2005. Woodward and Bernstein did not initially confirm the confession, citing a promise to keep the source confidential until his death, but did so immediately after his death.
Felt's confession was motivated by a desire to earn a million dollars from the publication of a book about Watergate and other speculation on the high-profile topic. We can only guess at what motivated Felt's behavior back in the 1970s. Perhaps it was a sense of civic duty and patriotism, awakened by his discovery of abuses in the highest echelons of power — that's what good, positive people would think. Perhaps it was a sense of revenge for his failed appointment as director of the FBI, as suggested by his boss, who was appointed—former FBI chief Patrick Gray. Or maybe it was the same thing that prompted the subsequent disclosure of his incognito—a suitcase full of crisp bills, as your humble servant believes. Some of the Watergate participants who stood in the dock claim that it was not that simple. Nixon's activities irritated some powerful financial and political groups close to the Pentagon, and Watergate became a brilliant operation to remove him from office.

Who knows.

But here is what Nixon himself, the culprit, so to speak, explained in his memoirs: “I made an unforgivable mistake by following the advice of members of my staff, some of whom, as I later learned, had a personal interest in concealing the facts.”

In general, the film will be of interest to lovers of history, politics, and simply good cinema. It is based on the book by Woodward and Bernstein and, presenting their version of events, is devoted to the history of journalistic investigation, with all the details of the journalistic kitchen—editorial meetings, the search for informants, persuasion for interviews, various journalistic tricks, and evening printing of the information obtained on analog laptops of the 70s, which at that time were called typewriters. And, what I liked, without the usual American pathos about protecting the Constitution and democratic values. Woodward and Bernstein are driven by careerism and the pursuit of sensation, and they make no secret of it. Woodward, moreover, is a Republican.