Major socio-political changes obviously affect film and media that are written big, but of all the historical ghosts haunting the cinema, Watergate is one of the most interesting. The event (and the entire political milieu surrounding it) would spark a wave of much more cynical, paranoid conspiracy thriller classicsby The Parallax view And The conversation Unpleasant Marathon man And Three days of the Condor. And yet not much real media has focused on the event itself.
Maybe that’s because All the president’s men was such a masterpiece that it seemed reckless to ever try to retell the Watergate story in any film medium (although the underrated BBC docuseries, Water gate, is excellent). Anthony Hopkins playing Nixon in a three hour biopic of Oliver Stone, and even that is barely remembered today. Or maybe it’s because the actual story of the scandal is really stupid, full of laughable men and pathetic plots. Admittedly, at the time it was a big deal. White House men working to get Nixon reelected broke into the Democratic National Convention and wiretapped their offices before launching a massive cover-up.
Or maybe that’s it. Maybe 50 years later, it’s not such a big deal in American politics. We’re used to Bill Clinton’s oral at the Oval, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Trump’s porn star hush money schemes and attempted insurrection, Hillary’s emails, Haliburton, drone strikes on innocent civilians and much more. Eavesdropping on your political competitor’s office? Try threatening to jail and lock up your political rival, or have the NSA wiretap every citizen’s device. In a sick, sad way, Watergate just isn’t that sexy today.
Plumbers in the White House hears those warnings and resolutely responds, “Hold my wiretap.” Rather than trying to turn the political scandal into a serious dramatic thriller, or use it as an allegory for the world’s recent and more lurid scandals, Plumbers in the White House comes across as an extremely confident and efficient character study and political comedy. HBO’s new miniseries is closer to the Coen brothers’ comedies (Burn after reading especially, but also Hail Caesar) than it is Political thrillers from the 1970s like it The day of the jackal, and that’s a good thing. With just five episodes and a great cast, Plumbers in the White House is a bizarre, funny and very entertaining history lesson.
HBO’s Watergate comedy dives right in
Plumbers in the White House jumps right into the action and never really gets the audience up to speed. That’s mostly fine, though, since the series is more interested in exploring these characters and what their ridiculous devotion to a corrupt president and system says about patriotism, government, and politics.
The series picks up a bit after the leaked revelations of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the extent to which the US military had bombed and destroyed Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. The free love dream of the 1960s was gone, the Vietnam War was an endless nightmare, banks and lobbyists were taking over Washington, and the government was hiding things from you. This was the climate that led to such paranoid conspiracy films, and Watergate only made things worse.
President Nixon is concerned about the upcoming election and a clandestine task force of sorts is organized, supposedly led by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. Initially dubbed the “White House Plumbers” (because they fix leaks), the two started by looking for dirt on a reporter who hated Nixon, Jack Anderson, before becoming friends and developing a series of wild schemes to help Nixon defeat his Democratic opponents. defeat. always “The Committee for the Re-Election of the President.” In the end, United States Attorney General John Mitchell approves a reduced version of one of their ideas: eavesdropping on the DNC.
Justin Theroux and Woody Harrelson are plumbers in the White House
Hunt enlists a group of Cuban freedom fighters he knew from his days in the Bay of Pigs, and this godless mess of CIA, FBI, and mercenary misfits puts the DNC on edge and executes their plan. If the suave thieves of Ocean 11 all of them had their IQ halved, they’d be a bit like these White House plumbers. The men get into trouble, hide their failures from their bosses, and hide everything from their families.
However, it is essentially Liddy and Hunt’s story. Both were larger than life men fully committed to the cause, but none more so than Liddy. With his thick mustache and stilted voice, the hyperbolic man’s existence is almost an exercise in self-mockery. After going to prison for Watergate, he would go on to become an author, actor, and talk radio personality for two decades. He told his audience to shoot federal employees in the head, and said he uses pictures of Bill and Hillary Clinton for target practice. He was a loud, proud and possibly insane man with a deep affinity for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
Justin Theroux steals the series as Liddy. Both he and Woody Harrelson (as Hunt) are very over the top here in performances that could easily turn into caricatures, but they manage to humanize these men while keeping their ridiculousness and hilarity. All gruff and growling, Harrelson is a terrible father and a failed family man whose only real passion is the vague concept of “for the love of the fatherland.”
However, Theroux takes the cake and is as funny as it is intimidating. He’s a real madman, a loyalist who would die for Nixon, who enjoys shredding bundles of money and plotting his own assassination to further the cause. He’s blowing up a record of Hitler’s speeches like it’s Metallica. He’s the best character the Coen brothers never created.
David Mandel and a great cast make the jokes work
Plumbers in the White House inevitably gets darker and more depressing as the brisk five hours march forward. Even if you don’t know all the manic details of the Watergate scandal, it’s easy to suspect it won’t end well; if it had been, we probably never would have known about it. The last two episodes of the series personify that stark political slogan: “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” Seeing the walls closing in on Liddy and Hunt almost makes you feel sorry for them. That is an artistic achievement.
David Mandel directs the series (created by Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck, based on the book Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House by Egil “Bud” Krogh and Matthew Krogh), and does a phenomenal job. It moves quickly without being confusing, landing all its little jokes by basing them on the characters. Mandel is well acquainted with deeply cynical political comedy, as a writer, director and producer on the brilliant Veepbut he also knows quirky, eccentric, laugh-out-loud comedy as a writer, director and producer Control your enthusiasm. He brings both skills Plumbers in the White House.
The supporting characters are also excellent. Domhnall Gleeson, Lena Headey, Ike Barinholtz, Toby Huss, David Krumholtz, Rich Sommer, Kim Coates, Yul Vazquez, Judy Greer, and Lena Headey are all fantastic and fast-paced but delightful performances by John Carroll Lynch, Gary Cole, Corbin Bernsen, and others are more than welcome. Kathleen Turner is absolutely gold as Dita Beard in a performance that deserves all the awards they can give her. She’s only in one episode, but she dominates.
At the end of the day, though, this is Theroux and Harrelson’s show, and they own it. They make for one of the weirdest buddy-comedy combinations in history, but maybe this was the only real way to explore Watergate in the current political climate. It’s all a joke. A deeply human, sad, consistent and ridiculous joke, and it lands.
Plumbers in the White House debuts on HBO Monday, May 1, with a new episode every Monday through May 29, and can be streamed anytime on HBO’s platform, max.