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All The President's Men

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    Ian Jane
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  • All The President's Men



    Released by: Warner Brothers
    Released on: November 12th, 2013.
    Director: Alan J. Pakula
    Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jason Robards
    Year: 1976
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movie:

    All The President's Men, directed by Alan J. Pakula and based on the book of the same name by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, proved to be a hit for Warner Brothers when it was released in 1976. The movie has gone on to be widely recognized as a classic, and rightly so. It remains a taut, smart and particularly well-acted film, a relic from the decade in which Hollywood seemed to have been at its most exciting and most daring.

    In the film, Dustin Hoffman plays Bernstein and Robert Redford, who bought the movie rights to the book, plays Woodward and we catch up with the two reporters in 1972 shortly before the Presidential Election is to take place. Woodward is sent to cover a story that seems fairly straight forward at first - someone broke into the national headquarters of the Democratic Party in Washington D.C. - but of course, this is not as it seems. Of course, this soon turns into the whole Watergate scandal and it obviously has some serious repercussions attached to it.

    Bernstein and Woodward talk to their editor at the Washington Post about what they've uncovered and he wants them to run with it. As they dig deeper, they find more and more evidence that the Republicans, and the President himself, have been up to some seriously shifty behavior…

    All The President's Men does a great job of tracing the evolution of the story as it unfolded in the pages of the paper, initially as a local 'break in' story but ultimately morphing into something much larger, taking on national importance and shaping American politics for some time to come. We don't get to know Bernstein and Woodward on a personal level so much, the focus here is not on the biographical aspects of their lives but on what they did and how they did it - but we do get to know them on a professional level enough so that they feel like real people. Much of the credit for this goes to Hoffman and Redford, who both do an excellent job bringing their respective characters to life. A few interesting supporting characters are also worth mentioning, specifically Jack Warden as Harry Rosenfeld, Martin Balsam as Howard Simons, and Jason Robards as Benjamin Bradlee. All three men turn in equally fine work here.

    The script is clever enough to remove Bernstein and Woodward from the limelight for a few key scenes that serve to bridge together their story and to fill in the blanks on the Watergate issues as well. This makes the scenes in which our reporters are digging deeper into the scandal even more tense. It's to Pakula's credit that he's able to make something as seemingly mundane as a group of men sitting around a desk talking politics something that will have you on the edge of your seat. Of course in this day and age, everyone knows how the story all plays out but that hasn't really diminished the film's strengths. It remains an excellent political thriller, one well worth revisiting.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    All The President's Men looks pretty accurate in 1.78.1 widescreen presented on Blu-ray in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. This is a grainy movie made with that seventies aesthetic that seemed to be popular at the time, meaning it's got a gritty feel and isn't a particularly vibrant looking picture. Colors are reproduced accurately but this picture is heavy on drab tones so don't expect a whole lot of pop. Sometimes detail is a little soft but this is definitely do to the way it was shot, it doesn't appear to be transfer related at all. There isn't much in the way of print damage to note at all, the image is clean in that respect, and a healthy bite rate helps to keep compression artifacts out of the way. No noise reduction or edge enhancement issues appear, and all in all this feels like an accurate film-like representation of the way that this particular movie should look.

    The primary audio track on the disc is an English language DTS-HD 2.0 mix though alternate Dolby Digital Mono tracks are provided in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese with optional subtitles offered up in English, French, French, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish. Given the age and limitations of the original mix reproduced here, audio quality is top notch. There's impressive depth to the track while the levels stay balanced throughout. The mix is free of any hiss or distortion and dialogue stays clean and clear even during those scenes where the soundtrack starts to get a little more dominant. A very strong mix through and through.

    Carried over from the previous Blu-ray release is the commentary track with Robert Redford, who talks about his two roles in the film, that being leading man and producer, and who offers up some interesting insight and trivia as to the making of the picture and the events that inspired it. The seventy-two minute long Behind The Story is a pretty strong documentary that serves as an interesting primer for those unfamiliar with the Watergate scandal that inspired the film. Also carried over is a seven minute clip from the May 27, 1976 broadcast of Dinah! featuring Jason Robards who is interviewed here about the movie. The film's theatrical trailer, menus and chapter stops round out the extras on the first disc.

    The main extra, which is new to this release and the main reason most will be interested in it, is the inclusion of a second Blu-ray disc which contains the feature length Discovery Channel documentary All the President's Men Revisited presented in high definition in 1.78.1 AVC encoded 1080i with audio in English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with English SDH, German SDH, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and Japanese subtitles. It's a solid ninety-seven minute documentary that more or less picks up where the feature movie left off by filling us in on what happened in the White House as the Nixon administration crumbled. There are interviews here with Woodward and Bradstein of course but also John Dean, Egil Krogh, Fred Dalton Thompson, Liz Holtzman, Alexander Butterfield and even former speech writer Ben Stein, all of whom offer up some input on their personal experiences as they related to the events portrayed in the movie. We also get some input from a few modern day political commentators and journalists, John Stewart for example, to add some perspective to things. It's a great companion piece to the feature and while it might not be enough to get those who already own the single disc release of the movie to double dip, if you don't already own it and are interested in the film, this documentary is absolutely worth paying a bit more to own, even if the previous release had fancy digibook packaging (which this new release does not have).

    The Final Word:

    All The President's Men remains a really well made film which showcases some excellent moments of drama and tension brought to life by a collection of excellent performances. It's a tight film, nicely shot and well edited, and it paints an interesting picture of some very unique events from America's past and presents them in a format that remains genuinely interesting and entertaining decades since it first hit theaters. This new Blu-ray release from Warner Brothers replicates the previous single disc but also includes the excellent feature length documentary in HD on a second disc, making it the best version out there at the time of this writing.

    Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!




















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