Meryl Streep stars as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee, taking on the might of Nixon’s White House in Steven Spielberg’s rousing, knuckle-biting account of the drama behind the publication of the Pentagon Papers. The treasure trove that Daniel Ellsberg lifted from top secret files threatened to expose decades of government lies that led the U.S. into the morass of the Vietnam War, and the risk of publishing them couldn’t be higher. Streep and Hanks, the crown jewels in a sterling cast, display new facets of their extraordinary talent. You can feel Spielberg’s deep engagement with the ethical and political crises these men and women had to cope with. This is history whose resonance is unmistakable. Journalism itself was in the cross-hairs of an angry and vindictive president; to take that on meant journalists were risking their careers, the paper’s future, their own freedom.