Spielberg’s ‘The Post’ a terrific journalism tale

Spielberg’s ‘The Post’ a terrific journalism tale lifted by Streep, Hanks

“The Post” is set shortly before the events championed in “All the President’s Men.”

Steven Spielberg’s excellent new drama, “The Post,” begins with the sounds of helicopters and Creedence Clearwater Revival and with images of soldiers carrying rifles and men returning from battle with life-changing wounds. ¶ While this sounds like it could be the Vietnam companion piece to the filmmaker’s acclaimed 1998 World War II drama, “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Post” is more of a prequel of sorts to director Alan J. Pakula Oscar winner, “All the President’s Men.”

Another celebration of great journalism, “The Post” is set shortly before the events championed in “All the President’s Men,” when Washington reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and editor Ben Bradlee — immortalized, respectively, by Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman and Oscar winner Jason Robards — helped link the presidency of Richard M. Nixon to the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.

“The Post,” which also makes a hero of Bradlee, is a dramatization of the efforts by the Post — and, to a lesser degree, The New York Times — to publish a massive and classified government document, “History of US. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-66,” which also would come to be known as the Pentagon Papers.

And it is an excellent if not-quite-perfect dramatization.

While Bradlee is a central figure in this story and is portrayed by Tom Hanks, “The Post” is as much or more about Katharine “Kay” Graham — played by the equally heavy-hitting Meryl Streep — the first female publisher of the Post.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX Tom Hanks portrays Ben Bradlee, and Meryl Streep is Kay Graham in “The Post.”