Weak on exposition

Rating: 6/10 (7 November 2005)

I enjoyed the movie overall, but it was a very fleeting glimpse of a disgraceful era in American history and it should have given more context. If you didn't know anything of the history of the period (and I suspect a lot of people don't), then you wouldn't get any sense of McCarthy's reign of fear, the lives he destroyed, the blacklistings, the way people were forced to choose between ratting on their friends or going to jail, the careers in ruins. Also, this was the first time the media shone a spotlight on an individual in this manner, and Murrow himself was wracked with doubts to the end of his days over whether he had done the right thing, but you don't get any sense of that inner turmoil. The whole movie was pretty muted and it could have been ramped up a notch.