Review: "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"

How do you portray a person whose most notable attribute was remaining an enigma?

That’s the challenge facing the long-gestating cinematic portrayal of Mark Felt, the FBI lifer who was eventually revealed to be “Deep Throat,” a key source to the Washington Post stories on Watergate by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which more than anything else helped end the cancerous presidency of Richard Nixon.

For writer/director Peter Landesman (“Concussion”), the answer is you cast a powerhouse actor in the lead role, show the Watergate saga from the perspective of the government investigators, present a dizzying gallery of players inside and outside the FBI, and hope for the best.

The result, “Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House,” is a noble effort that doesn’t quite sing. The film ends up getting caught in the minutia of the investigation, rather than exploring the moral quandary of Washington’s rot, and why a loyal company man like Felt was compelled to speak up (if not out).

Liam Neeson, decked out in a snowy hairpiece and ‘70s executive suits, manages to resemble Felt a wee bit. He’s obviously practiced the real man’s stiff, formal speaking cadence -- though this was maybe a time when it might have been wiser to personify rather than impersonate a historical figure.

(For a contrasting example, see Chadwick Boseman’s brash take on Thurgood Marshall in “Marshall.”)

As the story opens in 1972, Nixon seems to be riding a wave to easy reelection when the Watergate break-in and arrests occur. Almost right away, Felt, the number two man at the FBI, understands the potential for the scandal to go right to the top of the White House hierarchy. He gears up his forces to investigate the crime without fear or favor to any potential consequences.

But then FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover dies after five decades at the top. Felt would seem to be the natural choice to take the director’s chair, but White House flunky L. Patrick Gray is tapped instead. Gray is played by Marton Csokas, who practically seems to drip oily servility. In short order, Felt is instructed to wrap up the Watergate investigation toot suite, and is told who he can and cannot interview.

Felt starts dropping clues for journalists to pick up the thread, including Sandy Smith (Bruce Greenwood) at Time magazine and Woodward (Julian Morris). As his frustration grows, so does the level of detail in his leaks. Soon, on top of the Watergate investigation Felt is charged with discovering the leaker.

Felt eventually outed himself as Deep Throat in 2005, when ill health and the encouragement of his family nudged him to seek a book deal. (Upon which this film is partially based.) Many people had speculated over the years that Felt may have been the Post source, with the shorthand justification being that he was an ambitious man who felt snubbed at not getting the top job.

The film takes a more nuanced approach, suggesting that Felt was less offended over his own status than the injurious tactics the Nixon administration employed against a government agency whose mission he held sacred. On several occasions he brazenly tells White House power brokers, such as chief counsel John Dean (Michael C. Hall), that they have no authority over the FBI, which he declares a completely autonomous agency.

Given today’s political contretemps, such an assertion seems comedically archaic.

An important subplot to the tale, which isn’t well known, is that Felt’s own daughter, Joan, had disappeared during this time. He and his wife, Audrey (Diane Lane), searched desperately for her, fearing she may have thrown in with the Weather Underground, a radical group that he himself had been investigating.

Just how good was Mark Felt at keeping a secret? Let’s put it this way: when he was later put on trial for violating the civil rights of Weather Underground associates -- and convicted, then pardoned -- one of the people who donated to Felt’s legal fund was Richard Nixon.

That sounds like the sort of guy whose head you’d like to get inside. Alas, while “Mark Felt” is an interesting exploration of Watergate’s flip side, the man in the middle remains a riddle.

Review: "Spotlight"

“Spotlight” is the truest depiction of journalism since… well, ever.

Even “All the President’s Men,” “Network” and “Broadcast News” -- great movies though they are -- contained a certain quotient of Hollywood BS. Here is the new standard in cinematic depictions of the journalists, along with one of the best films of the year.

This new drama depicting the Boston Globe’s discovery of a massive cover-up of sexually abusive priests never skimps on the facts, or sexes up the individual reporters and editors, or creates composite characters to skirt over the unsavory aspects of some of the real ones.

Why? Because it never has to. The real thing is compelling enough and needs no sprinkling of fictional fairy dust.

Directed by Tom McCarthy (“The Station Agent,” “Up”), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Josh Singer, “Spotlight” is a great story about the making of a great and tragic story.

McCarthy knows a little about newspapering, since he played an ethically untethered reporter in the last season of the great HBO television series, “The Wire.” Having portrayed the worst of the profession, he now shows us the best.

Unless you’ve had your head in a hole, you know where the long tail of the priest molestation story eventually went: widespread sexual abuse by clergy and a coordinated effort by the Catholic Church, nationally and internationally, to cover it up rather than end it. Even the Pope personally apologized.

Here is how the shroud first began to fall.

The most realistic thing about the movie is that it shows how big stories are rarely uncovered by a single person who has the information fall into their lap. It’s almost always a group effort, it takes weeks and months and years of arduous work, and at some point in the investigative process someone will realize they already had the information they needed all along, right under their noses. But it either got swept under the rug or ignored in the rush of daily publishing.

The heroes here are the four-member team of Spotlight, the investigative project unit at the Globe. As the story opens in 2001 a new editor is arriving at the paper, an out-of-towner named Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), who knows nothing of predominantly Catholic Boston and is an unmarried Jew, to boot. He’s given warm handshakes and cockeyed glances, both outside the newsroom and within.

Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton) is the editor of the Spotlight, a self-described “player/coach” who doesn’t just sit in his office and circle misspellings. He’s a man of the town, went to the high school across the street from the Globe. He acts as the glad-hander and bridge to the city’s bastions of respectability -- who are hiding vile secrets.

Mark Ruffalo plays Michael Rezendes, the quintessential dogged reporter who seems to have little in his life beyond his phone and notebook. Rachel McAdams is Sacha Pfeiffer, who has a knack for getting people to talk, especially victims of sexual abuse. John Slattery plays Ben Bradlee Jr., the skeptical metro editor, and Brian d’Arcy James is Matt Carroll, the “glue guy” who eventually discovers that some of the accused priests have been living down the street from his family.

Stanley Tucci shines as Mitchel Garabedian, a cantankerous attorney suing the Church on behalf of dozens of victims, who is slow to be recruited to help the intrepid reporters. He’s fought many battles and lost. “I’m not crazy. I’m not paranoid. I’m experienced,” he intones. Also solid are Jamey Sheridan and Billy Crudup as conflicted lawyers and go-betweens.

The film nails, absolutely nails, the rhythms and culture inside a metro newspaper -- the petty rivalries, the built-in curiosity about everything, the caustic humor, the deep-seated belief that whatever you’re working on is the most important story in the world. All the little background details are there, from the men’s cheap short-sleeved shirts and ties to the hurried junk food, constant scribbling of notes and long nights away from family. (And how the librarians are the unsung heroes of every newsroom.)

It shows how journalists get reluctant people to talk, through appeals to better nature and sheer persistence, since they have no real power other than the threat of telling the truth. “You want to be on the right side of this,” they say, more than once.

The story of mass abuse of children by priests is one of immense importance, but even it is fleeting in comparison to the story of journalism itself. It’s been called the first draft of history, but what reporting most essentially represents is the intrinsic need to ask questions -- to inquire of our communities, our wielders of power, of ourselves.

“Spotlight” is the triumphant depiction of one of mankind’s noblest instincts.