Good Night, and Good Luck: Blu-ray disc DVD Review

(Originally published Feb. 3, 2006)

The new George Clooney movie, "Good Night, and Good Luck," is similar to Clooney's more recent movies in that it keeps audiences on the outside. It's an incubator of a movie, designed to be insular.

There are dangers in that, not the least of which is the chance that you might leave viewers emotionally cold if your story and its characters are too aloof.

That was the case in "Ocean's Eleven" and "Ocean's Twelve," two movies too hip for their own good; "Solaris," which smacked of self-indulgence; and "Intolerable Cruelty," whose focus was more on the physical attributes of its stars--Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones--than on the characters they inhabited.

"Good Night, and Good Luck" follows suit, but in this case, the isolation Clooney courts actually aids the film, giving it a sense of urgency it might have lacked.

Shot in gorgeous black and white by cinematographer Robert Elswit, here is a movie you watch with admiration for its subject, its technical achievements and its excellent performances. The caveat is that the movie is so ensconced in the time it evokes, the mid-1950s, that it demands that those who view it know a good deal about the events it explores in order to follow it with ease.

Younger audiences unaware of the showdown that took place between CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and Sen. Joseph McCarthy (played in news footage by himself), for instance, might initially find themselves scrambling to keep pace, as several readers have expressed through email.

Their concerns and frustrations aren't unreasonable--Clooney refuses to hold anyone's hand here. But in defense of the movie, which can be enormously rewarding, this is a film whose larger issues of censorship and big government, journalism and the tricky relationship between news corporations and the advertisers who help bring us our news, are as timely now as they ever have been.

In the film, Strathairn gives an Academy Award-worthy performance as Murrow, the star journalist who witnessed the injustice being done by McCarthy, who purportedly sought the truth by rooting out suspected Communists in spite of a dark campaign that was built on lies and innuendo.

With his news team and producer Fred Friendly (Clooney) behind him, Murrow used his formidable position to go after the junior senator from Wisconsin, which caused CBS no small alarm. After all, an unprofitable show is an unwanted show, and what Murrow was about to do had the potential to cost CBS plenty should its advertisers bail.

Ingeniously weaving archival news footage throughout, Clooney creates a movie that skates in and out of what occasionally feels like a documentary, with McCarthy hanging himself in a pivotal scene and Murrow being lifted up as an example of what journalism must be. Ancillary characters played by Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Ray Wise and Grant Heslov pepper the production, but they are meant only for the periphery. The exception is Frank Langella as William Paley, Murrow's boss, on whose shoulders rested the considerable weight of navigating these unwanted waters. He is every bit as confident as Strathairn, grounding the movie while Clooney allows history to speak.

Grade: A-