The Post is the story of how The Washington Post reported on the Pentagon Papers in 1971. It’s a true story about some of the decisions the government made during the Vietnam war and reveals the beginnings of the end of President Richard Nixon’s administration.

Story: It’s told with historical relevance. Directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, I can only appreciate how accurate it is. There are no twists or turns. The biggest moment of the movie is whether to go to print or not and that’s not a carefully crafted story line… It’s just the truth.

BUT, I will give them special mention for how they created the timeline of events beginning with the Pentagon papers and ending with the beginnings of the Watergate scandal. That was clever…

Performances: Meryl Streep is Katherine Graham, Owner and Publisher of The Washington Post and Tom Hanks is Ben Bradlee, Editor-In-Chief. Both deliver strong performances, but, I’ve seen both deliver better.

Though Meryl Streep is already nominated for Oscar Best Actress, this should not be her year. Her award should be that she’s the most nominated actor in Academy history at 21.

Other performances of note; Bob Odenkirk as Ben Bagdikian, the Post reporter who tracked down the papers and Matthew Rhys as Daniel Ellsberg, the government employee/contractor who came across the papers and gave them to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Visual: As someone who lived during that time, it was nice to see the early 70’s again. This film does a masterfully detailed job of capturing the time. The cars… the clothes… the hairstyles… the rotary phones and the phone booths. Things you don’t see in today’s society, they remembered to capture.

Rating: I’m at a loss to praise this film. It’s history – political history. So if you’re into history and politics, you may be engaged. I also had a moment when I thought, “Well, journalists would find this compelling as well… “

Then I remembered that I AM a journalist who has covered politics in Washington, D.C. and I was not engaged by this movie. It lost me along the way, many times. Historically it’s an A but as a form of entertainment, it’s a C. And since this is a movie, not a documentary, the C trumps the A.

Nothing to see here. If you want to know the story of the Pentagon Papers or the Watergate scandal, watch a documentary…