But this new film triumphs as its own original story, and it is a powerful one that stacks up among the best films of the year. The screenwriting by director Lurie is smart, the action is well plotted, and the performances, starring and supporting, are commanding.

Let’s start with Beckinsale as Rachel Armstrong. I have admired her acting since I saw her in a film titled “Cold Comfort Farm.” She has done much work since, but this tops everything. She is utterly convincing in one of the year’s best performances and at times heartbreaking in delineating this portrait of a married woman and mother, a person of conviction whose life is turned upside down because she refuses to bend before the pressures applied after she does what she believes is her journalistic duty of writing an expose article for a Washington, D.C. daily newspaper.

Her nemesis, a tough-minded prosecutor determined to break her so that she reveals those who leaked the information to her is played to the hilt by Matt Dillon as Patton Dubois in a strident masterly performance that dramatizes the stakes involved.

Vera Farmiga has an award-caliber supporting actress turn as Erica Van Doren, the C.I.A. agent who is also a mother and whose child goes to the same school as Rachel’s child. When exposed, Erica is trapped between the unscrupulous authorities for whom she has worked and who have their own agenda, and the consequences of suddenly becoming a high-profile public figure.

Angela Bassett provides yet another effective acting job as Bonnie Benjamin, the newspaper editor who stands behind Erica as the pressure mounts. Veteran actor Alan Alda adds a note of class as Erica’s hot-shot attorney Albert Burnside, who takes pride in the fancy suits he wears and in his success, but also believes in his client’s rights, feels for her as a human being and wants to make sure she knows the score of what’s involved. There’s a particularly intriguing bit of casting involving Floyd Abrams, who is a top First Amendment lawyer in real life (he was co-counsel for the New York Times in the landmark Pentagon Papers case), and here, playing against type, does a convincing job portraying the judge who orders Erica incarcerated until she talks.

The cast also includes David Schwimmer as Ray, Rachel’s husband whose loyalty is put to the test by her willingness to go to prison no matter the cost to their relationship. The expertise with which the above mentioned roles are handled is further reflected in other casting, and in the general atmosphere of reality, whether in a newspaper office, courtroom or prison.

There may be some quarrelling with the film’s ending. “Nothing But the Truth” is a highly political film that taps into the issues of government abuse and individual conscience in a manner that makes it extremely important in light of what has happened through the years of the most recent administration. But even beyond that freedom of the press is an historical issue and one that doesn’t die. However, there are viewers who may want the film to be even more political that it is.