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MOVIE REVIEW: The Post

Garth Cremona (RIP)

Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep star in the true story of how countless administrations of American Politicians fudged the real data and lied to the American people about the conflict in Vietnam.  Streep plays the owner of The Washington Post, struggling to keep the paper going, which was failing in profitability, while Hanks plays the Editor of the paper who knows that there is a huge story out there.  With the Government, under Nixon, trying to hide the truth from everyone and legally trying to strangle the press, doing everything they can to stop this information from coming out.

It doesn’t take long into the two-hour running time to see the similarities between what’s going on today in the Trump Administration and the Nixon White House over 45 years ago.  If you don’t think that history repeats itself time and time again then this is a wake up call.  On leaving this screening I am horribly awoken to the fact that we learn nothing from history.  We can spout out facts and figures from the days gone by, we can learn all the words, but we’re not learning anything from the mistakes, we have stopped learning the truth and the evolution of our minds has seemingly finished.  Oh well.  Thanks for reading.

The film is directed by Stephen Spielberg and he’s on good form here.  In fact it’s probably the strongest work of the main three in years.  While the supporting cast are cherry picked to stand shoulder to shoulder with the big three.  There are no weak links in the chain of performances.  I want to give special admiration to Bradley Whitford and Bob Odenkirk who in very different roles offer this amazing support to the film.  I’ve always liked Whitford from The West Wing anyway, but here he’s showing that he’s becoming the character actor that we always knew he could be.

Those of you that think this is going to be as hectically dialogue heavy as Molly’s Game or The Newsroom, you’ll be glad to hear that Spielberg knows how to do these films in his sleep.  It doesn’t talk down to you as a film, it doesn’t dumb down the facts either, managing to take complicated legal and political issues and walk you through the minefield that the press had to go through in order to get this top-secret information out to the public.  With Nixon desperate to stop the publication and launching legal action to gag the papers who get this stolen Government information Hanks and Streep are under high pressure on whether or not they can go to print with this story.

What I really enjoyed here is the fact that we’re not talked down to, nor is it dumbed down to suit the idiots who sit on their phones all the time to see whether someone has liked that picture of their lunch.  It’s an intelligent history lesson that entertains, and a lesson to film makers from a master, that lesson is that you have to entertain first and then get the message through.  This should be mandatory viewing for every person who lives in a democracy, or what we call a democracy, so that we learn that challenging the Government is not an act of treason it is the duty of every single person that lives in that country.  But the entertainment value in the film, with an amazing cast, and blistering script is so high that this is a unmissable cinematic event.  Please go see this film and learn that being a citizen means that you get involved, that if your protest means you don’t vote then you are part of the problem, find the truth and reveal it to the world.  One of the best films of the year and in the first week too… what a year to go!

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Liz Hannah, Josh Singer
Stars: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson & more….. See full cast & crew

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Garth Cremona (RIP)
Comic book creator and movie reviewer. You can find out more at www.dublinwriter.com
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