Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, is unfortunately a prime example of a case where you have a film dealing with real people and events that in the right and most capable of hands could potentially have turned into a riveting and overall fantastic movie given the fact that the overall subject matter and the real events and surroundings are fascinating in their own right and yet unfortunately the crew behind this film turn what could have been a truly mesmerizing film into a dull and ultimately lifeless piece of film. The film if you do not already know, is based upon the famous whistle blower who helped convict and later turned in secret evidence concerning then President Richard Nixon's association with the Watergate Scandal and how that ended his second term as President of the United States with him resigning as commander and chief which was probably a smart move because otherwise he would have been impeached. As anyone who is familiar with my reviews knows that I have a deep and passionate interest in politics and not just in my home country of Canada, but overall across the globe. I was not even born yet when Nixon was in office, or this whole scandal occurred, but I was nonetheless very familiar with it from my childhood days of reading old Doonesbury comic strips amongst the countless films and pieces of media that have been made upon the subject. The story and subject matter in itself is a fascinating one and was even made into the award winning, All the President's Men back in the 70's. And yet here the cast and crew do not seem to know how to approach this material and one of their biggest faults is turning what could have been an endlessly fascinating film into one of the most dull and I will say boring films of this, or any number of recent years. The film has a screenplay that seems to suffer from lack of ambition on all and every account. The film takes Mark Felt and makes him dull, boring and not a character who captures, or maintains the least amount of interest among the viewers. Neither do the side characters as well, they all feel very uninspired and in search of a better film to have been made about them. Most people probably know most if not all of the things that lead up to Nixon's resignation as well as the Watergate Scandal itself and this film manages to tell it in a way that seems to be flailing all over the place with no true direction, or end in sight. It takes what should be a simple and straightforward story and makes it jumbled and confusing which doesn't add much to the fact that the film is an outright bore in every other area. Even some subplots including Felt's missing daughter have no emotional impact, or any lasting interest upon the viewers because the characters have not been developed well enough for us to be invested in them, or care really one iota about what is going on when in fact in reality these were fascinating things and yet everything this film touches seems to be made wooden, lifeless and in bad need of resuscitation. I also can not give any accolades to the acting because it also is all over the place with some of the actors going too over the top with their performances, some who look like they are sleepwalking throughout the course of the film and others whose performances are so hammy that the Golden Raspberry Awards do not have to look far for some of it's worst performance of the year awards. One of the film's major problems is it's screenplay because it simply does not seem to know how to tell this story, to deliver a simple and yet effective plot line without making it all confusing and muddled and these characters all seem so one dimensional and we neither care about them, or what is happening to them and this is a film that is less than two hours in length and yet because it is so meandering and meaningless the film seems like it is coasting on autopilot for eternity leaving us sleeping in the backseat. This is a film that could have been potentially great in the right hands and yet as it stands it will remain a film that will not rouse even the least bit of interest and feels amateurishly done in the worst way possible. In other words, avoid like the plague.