Not bad as a documentary

Rating: 7/10 (5 June 2006)

I'm surprised that I'm in such disagreement with so many of the reviewers, not to mention the Oscar nominating committee regarding this movie. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoyed it very much and wanted to see how it turned out. But the reason I enjoyed it was mainly because it portrayed a significant and damaging period in U.S. history which I found fascinating. And yes, some of the acting performances were really excellent, David Strathairn in particular. But, as a whole, the movie was awful! The 1958 introduction essentially is a spoiler for the rest of the (1953) setting. That meant that there was really no suspense whatsoever. Even those who might not know anything about the McCarthy era would be unlikely to feel any great sense of involvement in the story. The cinematography, clearly something that caught the attention of many, gets in the way of the movie itself. Do we really need the film to be in black and white just because it happened on the TV of the 1950s? The continuity is hopeless. Most of the time, the actors (not Strathairn, fortunately) give their lines as quietly as possible as presumably they are some kind of secret that we shouldn't be in on. But the worst thing is that there is no characterization at all. We come away feeling that we really don't much care what happened to these people. Wouldn't it have been nice to make McCarthy a real person in the movie? Rather than just a bunch of period film footage? It's hard to get worked up about the "bad guy" when he's just a cut-out character. My recommendation is to see it if you love history. But if you want drama, or action, there are probably much better movies out there.