New Release! The Post (2017)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Chalk up another one in Steven Spielberg's "feel good historical drama" category. Like his others, The Post is a fairly predictable (not just factually) story, told by a whole army of supermely reliable veterans who rarely take chances any more.

The movie takes a look at a major moment in modern U.S. history - the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 by whistleblower David Ellsberg, who worked very closely with U.S. intelligence agencies. While the story is fairly well known for those who were alive at the time, this film looks at it from the perspective of one of the newspapers who was among the first to publish some of the highly sensitive papers which Ellsberg had illegally spirited out of his offices at the Rand Corporation. The D.C. newspaper The Washington Post was at a major crossroads just as a small sampe of the Pentagon Papers were published by The New York Times. The owner of the paper, socialite Kay Graham, who had inherited it from her dead husband, is deciding what direction to take the paper in. As she positions the paper to become a publicly-traded commodity, she is confronted with the legally thorny issue of the Pentagon Papers, boxes of which have turned up in the hands of the Post's writers and editors. Her dilemma is two-fold: (1) Publish at the risk of bringing the wrath of a vengeful Richard Nixon or take the safe route so as not to scare off investors; and (2) Publish in the name of journalistic integrity or sit on the story so that Graham's many powerful government friends can keep their reputations a bit cleaner.

For my part, the most interesting aspects of the movie were the historical data that I hadn't already known. I already knew a bit about the Pentagon Papers story from the great 2009 documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Seeing the story told again, with several added elements, was enlightening to a degree. And the general theme of the fourth estate, a free press, having the freedom to print anything truthful that might be in the public interest, is always a relevant topic, especially these days. And as one would imagine, the movie does everything with top-notch technical proficiency. Spielberg, Hanks, Streep, and the many other great actors in this film are simply too skilled and too professional to drop the ball anywhere. The pacing is brisk, the dialogue hums along, and narrative balls are juggled deftly.

Tom Hanks as Post Editor-in-Chief Ben Bradlee. Like the
characters he plays, Hanks never drops the ball. Knowing this
tends to suck most of the suspense out of movies in which
he stars these days.

All that said, I didn't feel that the movie was a standout in any particular way. Much of this has to do with the fact that, being a historical drama, anyone who knows a bit about the story knows what the outcome will be. This alone takes a fair bit of the air of suspense out of the balloon. When you add to that the mere casting of Tom Hanks, then you have a pretty good idea of exactly where this story is headed, right from the jump. My wife explained it well after we watched the movie when she described how when Hanks is in a movie, everything is going to be fine. That's his ultimate place in the cinema landscape. You need a damaged plane landed? Hanks will be your Sully. You need Somali pirates dealt with? Hanks is your Captain Phillips. You need a communist defector rescued from the clutches of the East Germans? Hanks will walk him right across that "bridge of spies" for you. His essential character in The Post is not really so different, being the man who serves as the defender of the free press and as the guiding light of morality and integrity through the movie. He's excellent at it, to be sure, but it's hardly a stretch for him at this point.

Anyone who's enjoyed Spielberg's recent historical dramas, Bridge of Spies, Lincoln, or Warhorse, is certain to enjoy this one, especially if they don't know much about the Pentagon Papers episode in U.S. history. But anyone looking to see the legendary director and the phenomenal cast stretch or challenge themselves in any way, you'll have to look elsewhere.