(Liam
Neeson plays Mark Felt)
This brooding drama shows how one of the
world’s most famous whistle-blowers nailed a US President. (Review by Patrick
Compton - 6/10)
This film’s literal, long-winded title
suggests that the real name of the famous “Deep Throat” in the Watergate
scandal remains hardly known.
Liam Neeson takes time off from his recent
spate of vigilante thrillers to powerfully portray the role of deputy FBI
director Mark Felt, the man who became the Washington Post’s key informant
during the 1972/3 scandal that toppled Richard Nixon.
Far better known, of course, thanks to
movies like All the President’s Men,
is the role played by the Post’s two muck-raking journalists, Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein, whose articles helped to sink Nixon following the break-in at
the Democratic Party’s headquarters. In fact, it was only when Felt revealed
his identity to a magazine in 2005 that his role became widely known.
Neeson gives a solemn, almost monumental
performance as a man who has spent a lifetime at the FBI under the dominant J
Edgar Hoover who dies shortly after the movie starts. You can almost sense
Felt’s halo as writer-director Peter Landesman presents him as an FBI hero, a
man who carries his integrity around with him like a suit of armour. The
possibility that the White House might be trying to improperly influence the
organisation in their investigation of the break-in is enough to trigger a
sense of outrage in this career bureaucrat, “the G-man’s G-man”.
A more cynical observer might think that
Felt’s motives for spilling the beans might also have something to do with
bitterness at being passed over for the top job after Hoover’s death. We can
only guess, however, as the film prefers to paint Felt in a more glowing light.
Landesman shoots the film as a noir
thriller, full of bleak-toned colours and shadowy profiles. This is a world of
spies, double-crossers and men on the make. Among these beasts in the
Washington jungle, a sharp-featured Neeson cuts an eerie, almost ghost-like
figure as he observes this world of duplicity and corruption.
If Felt’s character remains largely
inscrutable, the sometimes clumsy script does allow for some personal touches,
with Diane Lane convincing as Felt’s heavy-drinking, unhappy wife who, along
with her husband, attempts to track down their politically radical runaway
daughter.
The movie might be addressing an event that
took place 46 years ago, but its themes have a contemporary flavour given
President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey last year.
Mark
Felt opened at Gateway and the Pavilion on April 20,
2018. – Patrick Compton
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