Spielberg and Hanks' The Post Is a Quiet, Effective Newsroom Thriller

With their 2017 historical journalism drama The Post, Steven Spielberg and stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep aimed to tell the Washington Post’s 1971 attempt to publish the Pentagon Papers. The film treats that battle over confidential government documents as a vital story about speaking truth to power, and Spielberg’s kinetic direction turns newsroom maneuvers — especially the sequences transporting the report — into taut thriller material.

He moved quickly: production, from the start of shooting in May 2017 to the final cut, took under six months, and he said, “This was a story… we needed to tell today.” Tom Hanks plays editor Ben Bradlee, fitting Spielberg’s recurring on-screen moral center, while Meryl Streep portrays owner Katharine Graham.

The movie places Bradlee against both Washington politics and the paper’s social connections, and when the Pentagon Papers first surface in the New York Times, Graham and Bradlee must decide how to navigate the risks of publication.

United States, Washington, D.C.

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