The Post Spoiler-Free Review
I’m not going to lie, I really struggled to get this review going. Look at me, opening a review with a line like that… I’m basically stalling becasuse the truth is that I don’t really know what to say about The Post. It’s an okay film.
IMDB Synopsis: A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country’s first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between the press and the government.
The problem with The Post being a just okay film is that it stars Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, and is directed by Steven Spielberg. Yes, this film has some of Hollywood’s biggest talent behind and in front of the camera, and yet it turned out pretty much just average.
For those jumping up and shouting “But it’s because of the subject matter…”, all I’ll say is that Spotlight did a very similar thing but in a way more captivating fashion. You really felt the tension of what was at stake for everyone in the film, and how that was boiling over, out of the screen and onto the audience.
With The Post it just seems way more procedural, and even though they sometimes try to build that tension with specific scenes, it just doesn’t seem to land as hard for some reason. Also that final scene where it’s basically the start of Watergate (Yeah, spoilers for real life) was way more interesting than the film that came before it.
I fully understand that in a world where Donald Trump is president of the US, and we’re dealing with actual fake news, fake news claims against the legitimate press, and the decline of the press into BuzzFeed-ness, that this is a very important story to be telling because of the parallels that that time and situation draws with the current world we live in.
But maybe it was what felt like a weak script by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer; or maybe it was just the way in which Spielberg decided to translate it from script to screen that just didn’t work this time around (it hasn’t been working for him for his last couple of films if you ask me).
I hate to crap on this film, but considering the talent behind it, and how important it is to what’s happening in the world today, it deserved to be a lot better than what it ended up being.
Rating: 5/10
You can watch the trailer for The Post below:
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