Movie review: ‘The Post’

“The Post” has all the ingredients that make up a critic and box office hit.

Take famed Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and mix him into a film about heroic journalists fighting to expose dirty government secrets. Then preheat the atmosphere to a peak temperature powered by real-world tension between journalism, Hollywood and politics.

Sprinkle in Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, with a dash of Sarah Paulson for good measure. Finally, set to an epic score composed by John Williams to complete the surefire recipe.

With its legacy star power, sweeping musical themes and punchy writing, “The Post,” in limited release Dec. 22, occasionally played more like a Marvel movie than an embellished historical account. The film includes its fair share of newsy cliches, including rogue reporters and frantic fact-checking, but at its core is a perfectly timed story of resilience and resistance carried by a timeless underdog-turned-overnight-success formula.

The movie details the chain of events leading up to The Washington Post’s decision to publish damning information from the Pentagon Papers, which revealed multiple presidential administrations-worth of inside discussions about the Vietnam War previously kept hidden from the public.

Ben Bradlee (Hanks), the executive editor of the Post, becomes increasingly motivated to expose the government’s duplicity as soon as he acquires the papers, fueled by the Nixon administration’s repeated attempts to silence the press. Meanwhile, Kay Graham (Streep), the Post’s publisher and Ben’s boss, must weigh the consequences of printing classified information, which could result in the collapse of the paper and jail time.

Despite its subject matter, the film doesn’t open to the hypnotic chaos of frenzied newsroom typewriters or an intense discussion between its A-list stars. It opens in the thickets of Vietnam, following a camouflaged group of young, unnamed soldiers as they tiptoe through the trees before being ambushed and slaughtered by enemy fire.

The scene serves as an effective reminder of the drama’s greater stakes – an assertion that “The Post” extends beyond a trite tale of petty squabbles between journalists and government officials. Nevertheless, the rest of the movie delivers plenty of heated exchanges that make newsroom dramas so compelling.

Hanks assumes the role of the self-important editor in chief who isn’t afraid to pursue difficult leads and always has the last word. His flashy performance is riddled with cliche lines like, “Party’s over. Let’s get back to our jobs,” and presence-building physical choices. He exudes dominance, whether by slamming his fist on a desk in an effort to scare his reporters into motion or by simply adopting a demanding resting stance with his legs spread and his hands on his hips.

Unlike Hanks, Streep takes a subtler approach to portraying strength. Supporting male characters, like insufferable Post board member Arthur Parsons (Bradley Whitford), constantly undermine Kay’s authority and question her fitness to run the paper, which she inherited from her father and her husband. Rather than matching her haters’ aggression, Streep bears the damage to her self-worth in a raw show of sensitivity.

Kay finds herself in several meetings throughout the movie surrounded by vocal and opinionated men. During these scenes, Streep meekly fidgets and anxiously scans her male peers in a struggle to insert a word into the conversation – which often goes unacknowledged. Despite her superior status as publisher, Streep lends a depth to Kay that conveys the debilitating emotional toll a patriarchal environment can put on someone.

While Hanks is at the center of the majority of the film’s more show-stopping moments, like the rush to condense years of government secrets into one front-page story by the print deadline, Streep’s externalized vulnerability in the middle of the action ensures that when her own highly anticipated star moment comes, it outshines the rest.

When Kay finally shuts down her doubters, asserting her authority and indirectly threatening to fire Arthur, Streep delivers her lines with a sharp tongue that gratifyingly belies her earlier misogyny-induced timidity.

Tony Bradlee, Ben’s wife (Paulson), perfectly captures the importance of Kay’s triumph when she checks her husband’s ego by explaining just how courageous Kay’s actions are in the face of her condescending male counterparts. Her dynamic monologue is almost enough to justify casting Paulson in a role whose limited material and screen time is an insult to the actress’ stunning emotional range.

But the captivating screenplay involving covert missions for sources and company-jeopardizing gambles is far from wasted on its seasoned leads, who admittedly and predictably earn the film a shot at its transparent Academy Awards dreams.