The Plot

In the early morning of June 17, 1972, five suited burglars were caught breaking into the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. in an attempt to steal some paperwork.

The Washington Post catches wind of this and sends their overachieving new guy (only in the movie.. He doesn’t look like that in real life) Bob Woodward to the courthouse where the burglars are being questioned. We get scenes of Bob being a good journalist and asking around the courthouse getting names, before learning during the questioning that the leader of the five burglars admits to working for the CIA.

Bob reports back to the Post and with the reluctant support of his editors, continues to make phone calls about the names connected to the case.

Carl Bernstein, an annoying little whipper-snapper, is interested in the story and takes Bob’s stories off the copy desk and types up his own polished version. Bob catches and confronts him, but admits that Carl’s story is written better. Bob and Carl are both assigned to the story.

The rest of the movie explores how Woodward and Bernstein (with the backing of their editors and Ben Bradlee) start to get their foot under the case through… investigative journalism. By knocking on people’s doors at night, bothering lawyers, and being guided by Woodward’s secret source (Deep Throat/Mark Felt), Woodstein slowly learns how large the scope of this case is.

Woodward and Berstein also slowly get to know each other and learn how the other works (Like Bob using one of Carl's little metaphors about jumping to conclusions in the iconic Mcdonalds scene) while they're trying to get to the bottom of Watergate and spending sleepless nights together working and sorting thru notes and files to get to the bottom of it, they're slowly earning each other’s respect. (Real Woodstein says the movie is about the journalistic process, while Redford says he was more interested in the relationship between Bob and Carl. I admire Redford’s male fujoshi stance.)