Review: The Post

Set in the early 70s, this tells the story of the Washington Post getting a hold of a massive story that calls into question several American presidents in regards to America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Owner Kay Graham (Meryl Streep) and Editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) are somewhat at loggerheads. Bradlee and his journos want to go to print with the story. Graham is getting pressure from investors to cool the jets and wait until a lawsuit involving The New York Times’ print of the same 4000-page document is settled. The White House (Presided over by the honest and virtuous Richard Nixon) obviously is very much not happy. Bob Odenkirk plays one of the journos, Bradley Whitford is a nervous Washington Post board member, and Bruce Greenwood is a friend of Graham’s caught up in the scandal.

You’d think with this subject, that cast, and Steven Spielberg (Director of most of your favourite movies) at the helm, this 2017 newspaper flick would be an “All the President’s Men” for the ‘fake news’ generation. I imagine that’s what Spielberg had hoped we’d get out of this film. Unfortunately, screenwriters Liz Hannah (her first feature film writing effort) and Josh Singer (“The Fifth Estate”, the hugely overrated “Spotlight”) haven’t delivered anything that hasn’t been done better before, Spielberg isn’t exactly at his best, and Meryl Streep is surprisingly dull in the lead. This one has its moments and good intentions, but it’s incredibly disappointing and rather boring in parts. I’m not surprised to see Singer’s name attached to the screenplay because “Spotlight” was only barely worthy of a recommendation and “The Fifth Estate” was even worse.

I think one of the biggest problems is that unlike “All the President’s Men” where it’s told from the point of view of humble, determined reporters, our protagonists are Woodward and Bernstein’s boss Ben Bradlee and his boss, Kay Graham. Those characters aren’t the best way for an audience to get into a story, as they’re somewhat removed from the situation, at least more so than the journos. Since I didn’t much care about the lead characters, and the story itself is rather dull, America-centric and old-hat…I drifted in and out of this one. In “All the President’s Men”, we got into the mystery/conspiracy from the get-go because of the fact that it was told from the POV of the investigative journos. There was a sense of tension, urgency, and intrigue. Here I really only got interested towards the end, whilst most of the film is the hemming and hawing Bradlee and (particularly) Graham go through in whether to go to print or not (Something done far more entertainingly in Ron Howard’s “The Paper”, I might add). I can’t say hemming and hawing did much for me, even if it’s done by two actors who share five Oscars between them. Graham is actually a pretty uninteresting character as presented in this film, to be honest. She (and surprisingly Streep herself) ends up kinda blending into the background, despite being front and centre for much of the film. I get that she was thrust into the job due to the death of her husband, and wasn’t exactly a ‘born leader’, but does that mean she has to be walking beige wallpaper?

As Bradlee, Hanks has been better elsewhere and is certainly nowhere near as good in the role as Jason Robards was in “All the President’s Men”. He’s just OK, which is extremely disappointing from a fan perspective I must say. The best scene here is towards the end, a phone call that seemingly every character in the film is listening in on. That’s well-done. Hanks does have one good speech about accountability, but I actually think the best performance comes from veteran character actor Bruce Greenwood, who isn’t in the film much. Bradley Whitford is good as always, in another small role. Meanwhile, Michael Stuhlbarg appears to once again prove that he’s got it somewhere in his contract that he needs to appear in every second movie made. Poor Sarah Paulson gets the short straw here, mere window dressing as Bradlee’s wife.

I don’t think the story here has quite the universal appeal one and all had probably hoped for. This seems like a very, very American story, a very, very dry, one. Also a very, very overrated one. A lot of people think it’s relevant to today, but I actually think it’s more relevant to 2004 maybe. I know why people are finding parallels to today, but in 2019 I’m finding it rather difficult to get angry about anything in politics anymore to be honest, so my somewhat jaded perspective had me not really wanting to praise this film for its supposed timeliness/timelessness alone. Politicians have always been sketchy, ladies and gentlemen, not just Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald ‘Fake News’ Trump. Making a film about a story of political power vs. media power isn’t in and of itself merit-worthy either. It’s got to be genuinely interesting, and this one simply isn’t interesting. In fact, it feels like trying to pick up the scraps of “All the President’s Men”, and there’s just not enough of interest in those scraps. “All the President’s Men” found the interesting story and characters and made a really good film out of it. Two good scenes and one terrific performance do not a good movie make. At best I’d say it’s a well-made bore, but to be honest Spielberg has seen much, much, much better days as a filmmaker than this.

Rating: C+