Metacritic reviews

Ferguson’s narrative is so dense and complicated, and at the same time so dramatic, suspenseful and clear, that it absorbs all of your attention.

Watergate is an extraordinary dossier on what remains a major black mark on the republic. It’s also a sobering reminder that just because we were able to stop it once doesn’t mean we can relegate it to our country’s back pages. Consider this a cautionary tale.

In the course of a mammoth, horribly absorbing four-hour film from Charles Ferguson we are immersed in a world of milky TV news footage, big lapels, bulbous combovers, dirty tricks, sweat, jowls and guilt.

Watergate is a fascinating film that both draws disturbing parallels and offers the opposition encouragement.

The results are what might be best called “solid” journalism, with the occasional eye-brow raising surprise (Nixon wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institute?) There’s a wealth of archival, often familiar, television clips along with fresh interviews with some of the first-hand witnesses and participants.

There is plenty to relish here in the first-hand accounts offered up by the couple of dozen witnesses called upon by Ferguson.

The pace never flags, but some of its entertaining devices work against Ferguson’s insightfulness.

Though this look back is formidably researched and should appeal to both obsessives and the uninformed, it’s the insistent echo to our present upheaval, and the refreshing reminder that a polarized nation only got more unified in its desire for the truth, that gives “Watergate” its peculiarly of-the-moment power.

For those entering grade school, there is likely no better and more concise primer on the scandal. For everyone else, well, you know the story.

The parallels between Watergate and Trumpocalypse are so boggling that they preclude any other reason for why Ferguson chose to make this film now. And yet, it’s the film’s deliberate timing that calls its value into question.