the watergate caper (d. shane o’sullivan)

As a pocket guide to Watergate, O’Sullivan’s film is effective and entertaining. He incorporates references from popular culture and the arts into his broad-brush account of the scandal that brought down a president in the era when scandals still meant something. The obvious cinematic references are there: All The President’s Men, The Ice Storm. But there are also excerpts from Medium Cool and other films that are more or less off the radar. On a personal note I would have loved a bit more Hunter S Thompson, and also felt the spectre of James Elroy haunting events, with his Cuban break-in maestros and uneasy Agency tyros. But the film does what it says on the tin, as well as offering a commentary on how much contemporary culture seems to fight shy of the corruption that sits under its nose, in comparison with the bolder age of Tricky Dicky.