Good Night, and Good Luck

Good Night, and Good Luck (Director: George Clooney)

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK has been nominated for 6 Oscars:

Best Picture
Best Director: George Clooney
Original Screenplay: Clooney, Grant Heslov
Best Actor: David Strathairn
Cinematography: Robert Elswit
Art Direction: James D. Bissell, Jan Pascale




Actor Clooney directed 2002's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. He wrote the screenplay with Grant Heslov.

There are many excellent movies about the media; the top on my list are All the President's Men and The Insider. Both of those movies explore either the dangers of pursuing a story or the red-tape hangups of being a journalist working for a media conglomerate, where advertising dollars and corporate wheelings and dealings get in the way of telling the truth. Another sort of in the same vein is Quiz Show. All three of those movies are fleshed out with interesting characters, and we get to know them, and so when we get to the meat of the issues it is enormously satisfying. That's where this movie sort of loses some steam.

It's the story of legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow (David Straithairn, who's awesome) and his daring, yet fair and honest exploration of Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy's search for communists among us. He, along with partner Fred Friendly (Clooney), CBS news executive Sig Mickelson (Jeff Daniels), and several producer/reporters such as Joe Wershba (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his wife Shirley (Patricia Clarkson) took a chance on losing their jobs and being branded communists if they aimed high and missed. Their approach was successful, but drew the ire of then-president of CBS William S. Paley (Frank Langella), and indirectly led to the suicide of supportive anchorman Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise).

At 93 minutes, this is a film swift to resolution. In it, you'll see Straithairn pull off Murrow's broadcasts with excellent flair, and the evidence of McCarthy's one-sided and unbelievably are-we-in-America? type of investigation. This leads to a documentary-style feel. But what is missing is all the other characters. The Wershbas are married in secret, since CBS employees couldn't be married to each other--but I had a hard time figuring out exactly how the newscasts affected them. Hollenbeck's death is a shock, but we don't see what pressure he was under for his support of Murrow. This is something I think maybe 20 extra minutes could have solved. Clooney is to be commended for his approach, and the operation of dedicated newsmen looking out for the story without throwing in their garbage two cents (Like in Broadcast News when William Hurt says on the air, "In other words, I think we're all OK," and Robert Prosky upon seeing this replies, "Who the hell cares what you think?"), that's something we don't see really anymore. A real investigation into the facts, and whether maybe we should be alarmed (or whatever we're not feeling at the time) by it.

It's definitely good...it's a little underdone.