The Post review – Streep and Hanks scoop the honours in Spielberg's big-hearted story

Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep impress as Washington Post bigwigs fighting to expose government lies about the Vietnam war in the director’s timely dramaSteven Spielberg’s handsome new picture has a big, beating heart on its classically tailored sleeve. It’s a rousingly watchable film from first-time screenwriter Liz Hannah about the Washington Post, its editor Ben Bradlee, proprietor Kay Graham and what is supposedly their platonic office romance while publishing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. In the face of legal threats and boardroom fainthearts, their mission was to disclose the truth about how the US government deceived America about the unwinnability of the Vietnam war. It was the scoop that paved the way for the Watergate investigation.The film is a pointed celebration of liberal decency in the past and implied present. Its stars’ unadorned surnames have been put up on the poster over the title with granite simplicity: “Streep Hanks The Post”. These are naturally intended as Lincoln-Memorial-level rebukes to today’s various squalid declines in Washington and Hollywood. Continue reading…
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