I think it was because, once they linked the break-in to Haldeman, they had effectively linked it to Nixon, because what Haldeman knew, Nixon knew. Anything after that was anti-climax.

If you watch the teletype at the end, you see that every name is one mentioned in the movie, as if to say, “See? They were right.”

One reason they were able to get the story to the screen so quickly, according to the extras on the new DVD, was that Redford was close to “Woodstein” while they were still covering the Watergate story, even before they started writing the book. He had a big hand in pushing the two reporters to make the book about breaking the story of Watergate rather than just about Watergate itself.

I watched this movie shortly after I had finished reading the book (the order you should always use, by the way) and I was very impressed. Making this movie and releasing it within two years of Nixon’s resignation was a bold move. To make a movie suspenseful and compelling when everyone who sees it already knows the outcome and most of the details must be a challenge indeed.

My only real qualm with it was the ending. Rather than showing some of the details the book contained about how certain individuals were implicated, connected and indicted, the movie ends with a tele-type machine typing out the indictments of Nixon, Haldemann, et al., as though the producers thought it was running too long and they needed to wrap it up quickly. Kind of a bail-out ending to an otherwise great movie.