Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
Director: Peter Landesman
Writer: Peter Landesman
Based on: Mark Felt‘s autobiography (written with John O’Connor)
Cast: Liam Neeson, Diane Lane, Marton Csokas, Tony Goldwyn, Ike Barinholtz, Josh Lucas, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Kate Walsh, Brian d’Arcy James, Maika Monroe, Michael C. Hall, Tom Sizemore, Julian Morris, Bruce Greenwood, Noah Wyle, Eddie Marsan
Seen on: 15.11.2017
1-gif-review

Plot:
Mark Felt (Liam Neeson) expected to be promoted to the head of the FBI when J. Edgar Hoover stepped down. Instead FBI outsider L. Patrick Gray (Marton Csokas) is. But even though he feels resentful about being passed over, it’s Gray’s handling of one of his first cases – a surveillance operation based, apparently, on unofficial orders from the White House – that really sours things for Felt. He decides to bring the information about the Watergate case anonymously. to the public.

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House shows that spying and whistle-blowing can be absolutely boring affairs. So boring, it’s astounding. I am honestly still in a state of disbelief how that happened.

Liam Neeson really hasn’t had a good hand chosing films in the past years, so it doesn’t come as a surprise anymore that he is much better than the material he acts in, but rarely has this been as clear as here in Mark Felt.

It’s also really a sad state of affairs that apparently practically no women existed in 1972. I will have to do more research on how we, as a species, survived this astonishing lack and where all the women got to. (I hope they had a less boring party with all the men of color that the film also doesn’t show.) In any case, the few women that did get to be around and that were even allowed to speak, had the worst line of the entire script (poor Diane Lane!) and generally make very little sense.

But that may also be because the film obviously thought it would be enough if each character had one (1) characteristic. Why be wasteful and give them more than that. What’s this multidimensional you speak of?

In short, it really isn’t good. A film about Deep Throat with such a nice cast and all it made me feel was utterly exhausted? That’s a film definitely to be missed. Learn from my mistakes and leave it.

Summarizing: What a waste.