Starring Meryl Streep. Rated PG

More timely than good, The Post comes at a moment when Americans appear to have forgotten their own mission statement, at least in terms long put forward by an independent press—before it sank into conglomeration and cowardice.

The title refers to the Washington Post, in the early 1970s considered a provincial rag when compared with the old Gray Lady, the New York Times. The Post had its own grande dame, however, in Kay Graham, the first woman to publish a major newspaper and, eventually, to enter the Fortune 500 list of top CEOs. In Steven Spielberg’s latest, Meryl Streep portrays her as the veteran socialite she was, new to the brute realities of Nixon-era politics but summonsed to greatness by the journalistic creed shared by her late husband, Phil Graham, and her executive editor, Ben Bradlee. The latter is Tom Hanks, although long-time fans of All the President’s Men can be forgiven for thinking he’s playing Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee.

The somewhat utilitarian script from Liz Hannah and Josh Singer implies that Graham has just taken the paper’s reins in 1971, although this actually happened when her husband committed suicide eight years earlier. Anyway, her mettle is tested when the Times publishes excerpts offered by former national-security analyst Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) of what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.

Basically, the study showed that the U.S. government, under four presidents, had systematically lied about its involvement in Vietnam, and was currently covering up illegal incursions into Cambodia and Laos. In an unpresidented move, Nixon slapped an injunction against the Times for exposing “state secrets”. When Bradlee got the chance to run with the same ball, Graham had to weigh the risks.

With the benefit of hindsight, her decision was a constitutional no-brainer—especially knowing it was soon followed by Watergate. This well-documented gambit should have offered Spielberg a chance to have some storytelling fun. But he’s a meat-and-potatoes guy to the very end. True, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross offer some comic relief as anxious reporters who were on the case, but other supporting players—like Sarah Paulson as Bradlee’s wife and Alison Brie as Graham’s feminist daughter—seem to have been handed scenes simply to justify their less-than-urgent presence in the story. And there’s nothing here to add to what we already know about Hanks and Streep.

Where the movie does come to life is in the background texture of life when thousands of people were involved in the business of gathering, synthesizing, printing, and disseminating crucial news several times a day. In that sense The Post delivers.