it's a bit dry, but it's worth seeing

Rating: 6/10 (1 March 2006)

Doesn't work as a piece of story-telling but it has a lot to commend it, notably the acting, in particular the central performance by David Strathairn and a very fine one by Frank Langella. The choice of black-and-white was presumably made so that the archive footage would fit in pretty much seamlessly, and I think this pretty much worked, although the use of a haze of cigarette smoke was overused. I could see the point of the little subplots but they still seemed kind of malnourished. As a history film it seems to me to be preferable to the Spielberg or Mel Gibson approaches, which err on the side of entertainment. There's no doubting the seriousness of Good Night and Good Luck - it avoids sentimentality except, maybe, in one area, which is in its uncritical acceptance of journalists as latter-day knights, guardians of our freedoms. Ed Murrows are few and far between, after all. Most journalists would never have dared to do what he did. I would imagine that Clooney and his team decided that to show a counterbalance to the crusading journalism on view would involve broadening the film out and weakening its power. So what we get is a rather dry affair, but it was worth making and is worth seeing. Keep an eye on your freedoms, this film says. That is a worthwhile message.