Brilliant and dramatically compelling, but historically false

Rating: 7/10 (12 October 2008)

This movie was made by Hollywood liberals (George Clooney, Mark Cuban, etc.) for Hollywood liberals and is a none too subtle attack on Senator Joe McCarthy, the nemesis of Communists, fellow travelers and other 'useful idiots' during the Eisenhower administration.
The movie mocks McCarthy's claim that the U.S. Government had been infiltrated by over 200 Communists. But what it fails to acknowledge is the now well-known fact that there actually were over 200 such Communists in the Government, as recently revealed by information in the Soviet archives and by the Venona Intercepts.
McCarthy was a demagogue and a bully and he made many scurrilous and false accusations, and he got a lot of the names wrong, but give the Devil his due: he was essentially correct in his estimates of the numbers and seriousness of the Soviet threat to national security.
Hollywood is notorious for distorting history for dramatic effect, but the long-term dramatic effect is a republic of historical dunces.