The Post

This is a brisk, decent telling of the leaking of the so-called Pentagon Papers in 1971, the nickname for a secret US Department of Defense report covering United States-Vietnam relations from 1945-1967. Steven Spielberg's latest slice of liberal history was made in admitted haste to meet awards-season deadlines and retrospectively hymns good old-fashioned print journalism from the perspective of the compromised "fake news" age. In this, it succeeds, with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks as The Washington Post's socialite publisher and hard-bitten editor locked in legal battle when the bombshell lands in their laps, aware that publication could expose the Nixon administration while war rages overseas. Cursory knowledge of the subject will spoil the outcome, and a fetishistic nostalgia for "hot metal" printing and bundles of first editions being thrown from vans is essential to getting caught up in the narrative. The gender and racial inequality of the media is well-conveyed, with Streep the only woman in a world full of middle-aged white men, and the likes of small-screen stars Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford and Matthew Rhys add grit to scenes of just such men sifting through paper and making phone calls. Its narrative rigour and partisan sense of historical entitlement are sufficiently full-bodied for The Post to get away with a coda that references the still-superior All the President's Men.