too much smoke

Rating: 6/10 (20 January 2006)

Hallo everybody. It's been quite a while since my last review. It's good to be back.
I am going to be brief with this one. I heard a lot about GN&GL and how is one of this year's Oscar contenders so I decided to give it a go. Well, I'd say I'm not fascinated. It is well directed, well paced with a camera work in the spirit of ER and West Wing, and with some incredible cast  a superb performance by David Strathairn, but still didn't quite do it.
For people like me who are not familiar with the subject at hand this movie didn't make much sense. It looked like a documentary on the 50's America. Well that's OK but it means nothing to me. It was too historical, too political and too smoked. Can somebody tell me what was with all this chain smoking? There was even a full length KENT commercial shown. Unbelievable. Didn't get the idea. I didn't also understand whether the movie made a stand on the importance of journalism and TV particular in educating the ignorant and helping the weak, or a more general one  the freedom of ideas and beliefs as a whole. I don't know  do I make any sense?
I wouldn't recommend this movie to people not familiar with this period of the American history. As to whether the premise of this movie is still relevant, I would say  probably. But I think many people will agree with me that with the rise of the Internet the ways we get access to information have changed for the better. 6 stars out of 10