strong on history and relevance, weak on drama

Rating: 7/10 (12 February 2006)

Although set in the past - at the height of the Army-McCarthy hearings of the 1950's - "Good Night, and Good Luck" has a great deal of relevance to the world of today. For in an era in which civil liberties are again under attack due to a perceived threat to national security, and political opponents are labeled as "unpatriotic" and "soft on terror" merely for disagreeing with the powers-that-be in the government, this film reminds us of just how precious and vital disagreement and dissent are to the health of a democracy. The modern-day parallels are never far from the mind of director and co-writer George Clooney as he tells the true-life story of famed CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow's courageous attacks on Senator Joseph McCarthy during the politically charged era known as the Red Scare.
This film is reminiscent of "All the President's Men" in its austerity and lack of narrative adornment. Filmed in period-appropriate black-and-white, "Good Night, and Good Luck" spends virtually no time on exploring the personal lives of the characters, choosing instead to stay entirely focused on the drama at hand. This has both a positive and a negative effect on the film. On the plus side, the film doesn't become distracted by secondary issues or wander off into irrelevant narrative by-paths. Yet, the film has an almost hermetically sealed quality to it in that we rarely leave the highly insulated world of the CBS studios. As a result, the movie sometimes feels as it it's choking on its own lack of oxygen, not providing sufficient room for the characters themselves to breathe and grow. Morrow, the host of "See it Now" whose signature sign-off becomes the basis for the film's title, delivers his pointed speeches and the men and women around him debate the issues of the day, but we really don't get to know any of them as people in the way we would like (compare it to a film such as "Quiz Show" which did manage to bring a three-dimensional quality to its characters).
What the film does do very well is to point out the hypocrisy at work in McCarthy's witch hunt tactics, for apparently he couldn't see - or perhaps chose not to see - that, in his squelching of dissent and his terrorizing of those with political views opposite to his own, he was aping the very Communists he claimed to be reviling, becoming an even greater threat to true American values than those he despised.
The performances - particularly by David Straitharn as Morrow - are good, but the overall lack of characterization makes "Good Night, and Good Luck" more interesting as a history lesson and an allegory for today than as a full-fledged drama.