Important events... average movie

Rating: 5/10 (4 June 2010)

In the 1950s, Senator Joe McCarthy misappropriated the entire machinery of state to harass nobodies and consolidate his own power. What he did was fundamentally, grotesquely unAmerican. The combined talents of Clooney and baseball impresario Mark Cuban have reproduced that narrative. But they are not aware of subtlety. This film presents important events but does so with such a veneer of solemnity and self-admiration that it's not very edifying. The most dramatic moment in the film comes oddly when Army Counsel Joseph Welch (in historical footage) takes self-loathing runt lawyer Ed Cohn to task, and the McCarthy house of cards comes tumbling down. The rest is an elaborate frame for that footage. Strathairn's delivery of Murrow's speeches is so bloodless and off-putting that it kills the movie's momentum, and it makes for an extremely poor ending. The decision to pretend this is 'All The Presidents Men 2' is a bad one. It's not that story. The movie is inert for much too long.
What's more important to know is that Joe McCarthy was dead within 3 years of being knocked out of power, from alcoholism. A fitting end for such a contemptible human being. Would that such alcoholism might strike the descendants of McCarthy and Father Coughlin; Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck, O'Reilly, etc. Most Americans can't even figure out that the freedom they pay lip service to, arrives in their community as 'individuality' which absolutely horrifies them, and which they immediately attempt to crush.