Good Night, and Good Luck

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

This can also be thought of as Edward R. Murrow vs. Joe McCarthy.

I am too young to remember Edward R. Murrow, so I can't comment on the physical imitation, but David Strathairn was compelling in the title role. There were very strong supporting performances by George Clooney, Frank Langella, and Robert Downey Jr., among others. Joe McCarthy has an uncredited role as himself -- the black and white format allowed the film to use actual television footage of the era, which added to the authentic feel of the film. It's a subtle film, but very well acted and very powerful.

One side note - this is not to be watched by anyone who is trying to stop smoking. It is so odd now to see how people of that era smoked so incessantly.

[Guest sharpie]

Saw it with my 13-year-old son. He was by far the youngest person in the theater --=- average age about 75.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I can think of two movies that I've seen in the last few years where the audience was predominently silver-haired: Grizzly Man and Far From Heaven.

Far From Heaven was kind of a chick flick for old ladies. My best guess about Grizzly Man is that it was playing in a class restored theater.

[Vic Sage]

i was disappointed.

One of the best elements of the screenplay was its rich language, but then of course the language was written by Murrow, not Clooney.

The performances, the cinematography, Murrow's writing, and the importance of the story, all contribute to the film being above average. However, the script's structure leaves much to be desired, IMO.

when you are telling about a historical event of relatively recent (ie, last 50 years) vintage, where the outcome is fairly well known, you've got to find dramatic devices to make the conflict compelling. In APOLLO 13, Ron Howard was successful by focusing on the "how", not the "what", and you ended up getting caught up in a story that you already knew the ending to.

Here, Clooney needed to focus on the "why", but too much attention was focused on the "what" and "how". Since the conflict between Murrow and McCarthy is never dramatized (because its just a series of alternating monologues), you need something else to be at the dramatic center. Clooney tries, by framing the story with Murrow's speech about the power of TV and its misuse for mere entertainment, but speeches are not drama. And the language, as powerful as it is, was not in the screenplay... its the words of Murrow, reiterated.

If he just wanted to use existing footage and existing transcripts, Clooney might've been better of making a documentary. This "docu-drama", while still worth seeing, is slow, ponderous, inert and lacking in dramatic tension or development.