Review: In ‘Mark Felt,’ Liam Neeson Is the Man Known as Deep Throat

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True story: As the executive branch of the American government is revealed to be a sinkhole of corruption and deceit, a career F.B.I. man with silver hair and a reputation for righteousness takes up the thankless task of investigating the suspected wrongdoing and attendant cover-up. Just so we’re clear: I’m describing the premise of a new movie starring Liam Neeson. What did you think?

The movie is “Mark Felt — the Man Who Brought Down the White House,” and the headlines from which it was ripped are more than four decades old. The title sounds like a category error, since the White House, as of this writing, is still standing. But Mark Felt, though almost nobody knew back in the ’70s, was undoubtedly instrumental in ending the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. The associate director of the F.B.I. at the time of the Watergate burglary, Felt entered the annals of Nixon-era scandal as Deep Throat, a pseudonym bestowed by the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

Felt, who didn’t much like the name, identified himself as Mr. Woodward’s source in 2005. The memoir he published before his death in 2008 has been turned, by the writer and director Peter Landesman, a former journalist, into a hectic, intermittently intriguing and accidentally timely procedural thriller, with Mr. Neeson in the title role. His face as sharp as the blade of a hatchet, his brow creased with his weariness and his eyes ablaze with indignation, Mr. Neeson is a mighty presence on a small, cramped stage.

The word Shakespearean often attaches itself to the Nixon administration — it’s an adjective that marks the place where political power intersects with moral instability — and “Mark Felt” tries to infuse some dramatic grandeur into what is in essence a chronicle of bureaucratic scheming. The president and most of the president’s men are rarely seen and only occasionally heard over the phone. Felt and his F.B.I. colleagues hustle in and out of offices, whisper in corridors and ride in dark, period-appropriate sedans. For the benefit of viewers who may have trouble distinguishing one white guy in a suit from another (the earnest and talented supporting cast includes Josh Lucas, Tony Goldwyn, Ike Barinholtz and Brian d’Arcy James), they often address one another by full name and title.

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Even for die-hard Watergate nerds, the movie can be a tough slog. The main conflict is between Felt and his new boss, L. Patrick Gray (Marton Csokas), who Felt comes to believe is functioning as Nixon’s mole in the F.B.I., and who also wants to limit the bureau’s Watergate inquiries. (Gray is also the man who took the job Felt thought should have been his, and wounded pride may be among his motives.) Meanwhile, on the home front, Felt and his long-suffering, heavy-drinking wife, Audrey (Diane Lane), worry about their daughter, who has vanished into the mists of the counterculture. There is a potentially interesting tension between Felt’s professional duties and his personal life that never fully takes shape.

“Mark Felt” is a sharp portrait set against a blurry background, a history lesson that won’t help you on the test. It is possible to savor the crags and shadows of Mr. Neeson’s performance without quite grasping why Mr. Landesman thinks the story is worthy of such somber, serious and sustained attention. Both the internal politics of the F.B.I. in the aftermath of J. Edgar Hoover’s death and the larger political and social dramas of the late ’60s and early ’70s are invoked, but neither the national nor the institutional stakes are illuminated with sufficient clarity or force.

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