THE POST Dir by Spielberg Stars Streep and Hanks Is The Attacks on Free Press During Viet Nam War

 Master movie director, Steven Spielberg created another first rate entertaining film of vital historic & social significance.  THE POST is the story of Katherine Graham (the indomitable Meryl Streep) thrust into the helm of her family's newspaper during the 1970s faced with momentous decisions to release the McNamara & Pentagon Papers.  These reports confirmed the deliberate fabrication of false reports incriminating the presidencies from Truman, up to Nixon & his Sec. of Defense McNamara of deliberate propaganda to deflect the devastating debacle our involvement in Viet Nam.  Ken Burns in depth & painful doc. 'Viet Nam'  presents the facts of the war from the American, S & N Vietnam perspective. Both Burn's doc & Speilberg's film depict the heinous, deceitful, shameful & bloody involvement of the US.  THE POST picks up the story in 1971 with Graham & Ben Bradley (an infallible Tom Hanks) trying to salvage the fledgling paper by going public.  The genre is a  journalistic thriller & inspirational story of courageous individuals resolved not to allow the truth get buried.  Investigative reporting uncovers confidential papers that revealed the true status of failure & fatalites known by top officials from 1965 that the US concealed.  Other ace reporters & prominent players was delivered by an A+ cast including Bob Odenrick, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford & Michael Stuhlbarg.  The film registers an intense drama of defiance & perseverance.  Both the NYT & The POST defied federal injunctions to stop them from printing stories about the lies fed the public by KY, LBJ, Nixon & McNamara.  The film is especially prescient & profound.  Graham is the central character for whom greatness was thrust upon & who bravely maintains positions that were radical and essential for the protection of a free society based upon freedom of the press.  There are back page stories of friendships between Graham/McNamara and Bradley/Kennedy that tested loyalties & righteous priorities.  The stats hard to swallow along with the mendacious & flawed decision making in the reports of America's wrongful involvement shows it was intended as 10% aid, 20% to fight communism and 70% to prevent the humiliation of a US defeat.  Nixon's punitive banning of Post reporters from covering his daughter's wedding were not as severe as the intentional misleading of the public & White House nefarious dealings.  Needless, Nixon's pernicious banning of Post reporters post the US Supreme Ct ruling in favor of the newspaper is a harbinger for the lead story about to break; Watergate.  This movie is as entertaining as it is a frightening disclosure of diminishing freedoms of speech, peaceful protest and Trump's cries & lies of "fake news."