Watch Liam Neeson Take Down Nixon as Deep Throat in First ‘The Silent Man’ Clip
It’s not an exact science, making movies. Plenty of projects get stuck in the suspended animation of development, and even those that move forward do so at a gradual pace. But sometimes, everything works out just perfectly: two years ago, I reported on a picture called Felt, a biopic of Watergate informant Mark ‘Deep Throat’ Felt starring Liam Neeson in the title role. I forgot about the item soon afterward, but production has been chugging along for the past couple of years, and director Peter Landesman is preparing to unveil this new film at the most perfect time imaginable. You can plan for a lot, but it takes a stroke of divine generosity for a full-scale Presidential investigation to break out around the time you release your Watergate movie.
That film has since been retitled The Silent Man, and today brings a pair of updates. Deadline broke the news that Sony Pictures Classics has purchased the rights to distribute the latest film from Concussion director Landesman in the ostensible hopes that the man can lead another one of his subjects to a Best Actor Oscar nod. Hoping to strike while the iron of national interest in political malfeasance is hot, Sony has set a release for September — my guess would be a run concurrent with the Toronto International Film Festival, something similar to the strategy attempted by Oliver Stone’s Snowden last year.
But above, you can get a taste of Neeson’s performance as the shadowy crusader with the first official clip. It’s just about what you’d expect: lots of urgent growling about secrets and Herbert Hoover, stunned silence from Michael C. Hall (who plays John Dean, mastermind behind the Watergate cover-up), threats of exposure. Will the real-world scandal currently unfolding meet with as just an ending as the Watergate controversy? We all turn to Liam Neeson for the answer. It’s his responsibility now.