Mark Felt – The Man Who Brought The White House Down

In the year before the Watergate scandal, Mark Felt is the incorruptible associate director of the FBI. Fending off threats of intimidation from President Nixon’s White House, Felt reminds those assembled of the FBI’s staunch political impartiality. The matter would seem to be settled until the shock demise of FBI’s forceful leader Edgar J Hoover. Now there is suddenly a power vacuum, and one that the White House would seek to stem with their own appointee – who will report directly to the president. For Mark Felt this is not just not an assault on the FBI integrity but also on the very fabric of the American itself.

Liam Neeson underplays Mark Felt  and portrays as a man of principle in unprincipled times. A grey man with even greyer politics, Felt has been witness to many of the excesses and indiscretions of America’s power elite for over 40 years. A man with access to this many secrets poses a threat to the Nixon administration and this is the key confrontation in this drama that leads up to and includes the eponymous Watergate scandal.

…a great companion piece to ‘All The President’s Men’.

Deliberately sober in its tone for a real-life drama, ‘Mark Felt – The Man Who Brought The White House Down’ is a melodrama-free tale that acts as a great companion piece to ‘All The President’s Men’. That said, it may be difficult to follow for those not already familiar with the history it charts and the figures it seeks to skewer.

By mixing both newsreel and live action footage, this is an unashamedly procedural drama ably acted with a solid eye for period detail and an almost habitual single scene-stealing appearance by Eddie Marsan.

A flip-side to thew history of Bernstein & Woodruff’s Washington Post drama starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, ‘Mark Felt – The Man Who Brought The White House Down’ is about why the infamous ‘Deep Throat’ coughed and how he blew the whistle on those in power.