Review of The Post (2017) by Shannon D — 07 Feb 2018
Well done suspenseful drama about the publication of the top secret Pentagon Papers which delineated the history of US involvement in Vietnam from Truman through Johnson, but not Nixon as the film portrays it. Nixon hadn't even been inaugurated when the papers were compiled--and Nixon never banned the Post from the White House. That said, he was indeed still a crook, but based on Watergate, not this. The films main indictment of the executive was 70% of the reason we continued to increase our presence there was "to avoid a humiliating defeat.".
The real villains were LBJ and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. Kennedy, partly on the advice of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who'd told him it was folly to be anywhere on mainland Asia, had initiated an accelerated withdrawal from Vietnam to be completed by 1965. Johnson rescinded that a few days after Kennedy was assassinated. None of this is covered in the film, though it showed the Washington Post's owner, Katharine Graham, turning on McNamara at the end, but leaving the president he served, LBJ, unscathed.
That's an egregious omission. The question is, did they not do their homework (quite possible), or was it intentional?
This review of The Post (2017) was written by Shannon D on 07 Feb 2018.
The Post has generally received positive reviews.
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