Meryl Streep (Oscar nomination) and Tom Hanks star as Katherine Grahame and Ben Bradlee in this look at her coming into her own as the Post’s publisher in the battle over the Pentagon Papers in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated history. She’s excellent, he’s ok, if a bit theatrically gruff. Bradlee is also played as a bit too pure for my tastes. His CIA ties 1950s-60s and resultant legal chicanery in the 1960s are nowhere to be found. He’s not just a journalist here, and his failings run much deeper than simply being too close to JFK. Grahame’s rise to finding her own voice in XY world is interesting, but I’m not especially moved about her as a media mogul after the case, when she—and most other papers—turned on her (their) unionized workers. In any event, however, the intersection of many high-end media/state/analysis sectors are really interesting. I didn’t know Ben Bagdikian had been at Rand. The story is important, well-presented and well turned. The government’s lies on Vietnam, Ellsberg’s actions, and Nixon’s behavior all make for a powerful story, as do Bradlee and Grahame’s battle’s with the Post’s money-men, not to mention the struggle of the “plucky little local paper” the Post, vs the 800-lb gorilla, the smug and self-satisfied New York Times. In our own times, the lies, the perfidy, the criminality that was so shocking then is esteemed by an executive as business as usual. The film’s value should be as a warning claxon, but I worry it might be viewed as a comforting statement about the system’s capacity to, eventually, do the right thing. An alarm might not be necessary given how totally freaked we are, but a reminder of the need to fight is never off