it had its moments

Rating: 4/10 (5 November 2005)

I found Goodnight, and Goodluck, the supposed story about the fight between Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy against the wrongful accusation of people as Communists and wrongful punishment of those innocent people, to be pretty boring throughout, a little confusing, but good when it got to the central point. It takes a while for the movie to get going, but when it gets to the central topic, Murrow attacking McaCarthy it becomes interesting, but after that conflict ends so does the movie essentially except it keeps going for another 20 minutes or so. I found it interesting to see the sorts of supposed evidence and facts that are thrown back and forth between the two and how Murrow had a great impact in bringing down McCarthy. It also shows how the media has a great impact on this countries government that one could argue was initiated by Murrow. However, for all the interesting parts of the movie, there are probably more that don't make much sense and are probably worthless. There are a few scenes in the movie where you see Robert Downey Jr.'s character w/ his wife, whose relationship was forbidden b/c they worked together, both at home and in the office talking about various subjects. At the end of the movie, those scenes were completely worthless, they have no impact on the film at all. Why even include them, now that I think about it, those two characters were completely worthless in the entire movie, other than one other scene w/ Robert Downey, neither his character nor the character of his wife were in any scene that was apart of the central plot. The movie is also very boring most of the way through, most of the show takes place in the CBS studio, they don't show much of the actual McCarthy conflict other than what they showed on the air. The only interesting parts are when Murrow is doing his live pieces to try to deface McCarthy and some of the sessions in the editing room where they are deciding what to cover and how to cover it. Otherwise there is a lot of useless crap that leaves the movie bland. Being that the movie is only about an hour and a half long, it seemed as if the writers couldn't think of what else to include in the movie so the made up some useless story lines. As a student of history I came in expecting to learn more about the despicableness of Sen. Joe McCarthy and to see the battles between Murrow and McCarthy and the impact the free press plays on American politics. Instead I saw a movie more about the internal politics of a major TV network (CBS) and the relationships between the people working at CBS, specifically Murrow's show. The one positive thing about this film is that it is fairly short so you don't have to sit through it too long, but don't be surprised when you find yourself looking down at your watch every so often.