Exceptional...and an important history lesson.

Rating: 9/10 (23 March 2018)

Good use of video
smoking

"Good Night, and Good Luck" is an exceptional film and much of it is because we too often forget our history...and as a result don't learn from it. It's an excellent history lesson. My only complaint is that the context for the Red Scare and McCarthyism is missing...and I would have appreciated it had it been included or even mentioned. While nearly everyone attacked for communist sympathies during this era were decent people, there were some things that gave reason for the concerns about communism. Stalin was behaving very threatening...decided to keep all of Eastern Europe following WWII and developing his own atomic bomb. But, and this is important, this does not in any way justify folks losing due process and their constitutional rights because of these fears...and the 1950s were a time of intense fear of the USSR. For folks unfamiliar with the era, this missing context might make the film a bit confusing. Despite this, the movie is a very important lesson..though the context might have been appreciated by retired history teachers, like myself!
As far as the plot goes, the film is ABOUT Senator Joseph McCarthy but instead of focusing directly on him, you only see stock footage of him making his anti-communism tirades in Congress. Instead, the film centers on Edward R. Murrow and CBS's investigation of McCarthy and his methods...an interesting choice and one that makes the film quite clever.

David Strathairn is excellent as Murrow and the director/writer/actor George Clooney did a nice job in capturing the feel of the time. Everyone is smoking heavily...which is what folks did back then. Heck, that's what ended up killing Murrow...a three-pack a day man himself! It was also smart to make the picture in black & white--as it not only captured the look of the time (when most everything was in black & white) but helped to make the McCarthy clips seem more real and less jarring. Overall, an exceptionally well made film...one well worth your time.