Good Night, and Good Luck

Good Night, and Good Luck is set in an era when cigarette commercials were still on television and anchors lit up on air. This smoke-and-jazz-filled film chronicles the 1950s fight between Senator Joseph McCarthy and reporter Edward Murrow over the Senator's red-baiting ways. Of course, the point seems to be the not-so-veiled allegorical implication that McCarthyism is still happening to some extent today. Shot in black and white, the film's cinematography evokes the great political dramas from the pre-color era, and the fast-paced newsroom scenes and rapid-fire dialogue bring to mind His Girl Friday.

As Murrow, character actor David Straitharn is pitch-perfect in the role of the classic reporter. However, George Clooney as Murrow's producer, looks rather anachronistic in what otherwise feels like cinema verite from the 1950s. Clooney, who also wrote and directed, does a fine job acting, but the former ER it-boy seems curiously out of place in this small political drama with all character actors. Credit goes to Clooney, however, for not trying to cast the difficult role of McCarthy. Instead, the Senator appears in carefully-edited archival footage.

Perhaps the film would have been more effective as a straight documentary, because this hybrid effort delivers a plot that is only occasionally interesting. The two subplots, one involving married reporters (Robert Downey Jr. and indie star Patricia Clarkson) and the other a depressed anchor on the way down (Ray Wise), both hold the promise of intrigue but are never fully explored. There are also occasional cuts to a jazz singer in a recording studio which, although a well-sung respite from the newsroom-centered drama, are never explained and thus feel entirely random.

In the concluding scene of Good Night and Good Luck, Murrow speaks before a crowd, decrying America's proclivity toward game shows instead of the news. It feels like he is justifying this "thinking man's movie" when all we asked for was a little entertainment.