Weak story ... and why all the chain-smoking?

Rating: 3/10 (21 October 2005)

This movie, which is presented in the form of a semi-documentary, is meant to dramatize the showdown between Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954. But, sadly, this movie fails to hit the mark. It's all show and no substance. It promises a lot and delivers little. In short, this movie is pretentious. Edward R. Murrow is portrayed as a nervous, chain-smoking shell of the reporter who was the most famous war correspondent of World War Two. Further, the vaunted showdown between Murrow and McCarthy doesn't happen. They don't even speak to each other. Instead the movie uses old stock footage to vilify Senator McCarthy, yet in much of the footage McCarthy sounds quite reasonable and makes a case for ferreting out subversives in the government. The fact is that in 1954 the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War and Soviet agents were operating as spies in the United States. Okay, Senator McCarthy may have accused the wrong people of being Communist subversives, but was his claim of Communist infiltration into the U. S. government so much off the mark? Was there not at least some cause for concern? And by the way, what's with all the chain-smoking in this movie?