Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film follows Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham, who ran The Washington Post for over 20 years, and made the decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, which held inflammatory details about the U S's involvement in Vietnam.
Graham risked losing her newspaper and even prison time by defying then-president Richard Nixon and publishing the papers.
Hanks plays the newspaper's then-editor, Ben Bradlee, who pushed publisher Graham to release the documents when the New York Times, which first started publishing the documents, was hit with an injunction.
"And individually we have to decide when we take to the ramparts. You don't take to the ramparts necessarily right away, but you do have to start weighing things. You may think: 'You know what? I think now is the time.' This is the moment where, in some ways, our personal choices are going to have to reflect our opinions. We have to start voting, actually, before the election. So, I would probably vote not to go."
The film, which has received six Golden Globe Award nominations, hits theaters December 2.