Based on the true story of the media battle between Senator Joseph McCarthy and Newscaster Edward Murrow, George Clooney and company’s portrayal of the incident is nothing short of brilliant. David Strathairn will surely be nominated for best director, and hopefully the movie itself will be as well. Overall, I think the thing I enjoyed the most was the simplicity of the story telling. There wasn’t any attempt to dress up or super-dramatize the story, it was just a retelling of it, and the drama and intensity was inherent in the simplicity. One more basic observation is holy cow did they smoke a lot in the 50’s. There is just non-stop smoking going on, but the real quick scene where they have a realistic fifties (possibly even verbatum) cigarette commercial is quite funny, and sheds light on why everyone is smoking non-stop.
A very important movie about a very important event that not a whole lot of us really know about, and something I feel we should all see. Good stuff.
Overall Rating: 4.5
Morgan and I went to see this together when he was in Pittsburgh, and I definitely agree that it is a very strong movie. However, there’s no real reason why it has to be seen on a big screen to be fully appreciated…waiting for dvd might be the way to go with this one for those of you with less cash, or less free time to go out and see movies.