Good Night, And Good Luck

Good Night, And Good Luck painstakingly reconstructs the historic 1954 clash between CBS newsman Edward R Murrow (David Strathairn) and Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy (playing himself on archival tape, much to the embarrassment of test audiences, who complained he was "overacting"). Seeing a Red under everyone's bed, McCarthy embodied Cold War paranoia and Murrow, a firm believer in speaking truth to power, was determined to use the popularity of his show, See It Now, to call him out.

Co-written by Clooney and Grant Heslov, the film brilliantly recreates a time when television was in its infancy and the power of the medium was still untested. Idealists like Murrow saw a vehicle for democracy - albeit one dependent upon profit making enterprises - and Strathairn, with his focused intelligence and natural intensity, doesn't so much play the character as inhabit him. With a commendable lack of ego, Clooney takes the less visible role of Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly, while Frank Langella is deliciously calculating as Murrow's boss, William Paley. Confining itself almost entirely to the newsroom, the movie paints a male-dominated world of shirtsleeves and cigarettes and the thrill of meaningful work. Not since All The President's Men has journalism seemed so glamorous.

Stunningly shot in every shade from radiant white through inky black, Good Night, And Good Luck suggests Clooney has the skills to become a formidable directing talent. And if you're inclined to forget that heroes are almost always more interesting with their flaws on their sleeves, the film may convince you it's a minimalist masterpiece. It's certainly the most grown-up movie to appear in ages, targeting an audience more commonly believed to spend its evenings dreaming of pension plans and retirement homes. In style, pacing and fecundity of argument, the movie barricades itself against the attention impaired and the historically uninformed - in other words, 90 percent of mainstream America under the age of 40. Even the President is unidentified. Indeed, Good Night, And Good Luck may be the most withholding American movie of the decade.

At times, this impenetrability can feel like an audience-flattering gimmick. To hell with the fans of Danny Ocean: Clooney is touchingly confident that the viewers he wants will tear themselves from "Charlie Rose" and hobble to the multiplex. Good Night, And Good Luck is both a tribute film to Clooney's broadcaster father, Nick, as well as Murrow, and a soapbox for some timely media eye poking. It asks us to notice that the "wealthy, fat, comfortable, complacent, and insulated" journalists Murrow excoriated (in the 1958 industry dinner that opens the film) have hardly disappeared from today's newsrooms and that conversations about journalistic integrity may be more crucial than ever.

But the film's stunning set design and lemming-like performances cannot obscure the fact that its director is hobbled by hero worship. Murrow may have been legendary, but he wasn't a god, and Clooney's refusal to humanize him flattens the film to an adulatory pancake. Narrowing his eyes to just one five-month period - a Murrow/McCarthy High Noon - Clooney creates his own universe, seals the doors and windows, pumps it full of secondhand smoke and testosterone, and lets his actors do the rest. They do, flawlessly - and that's exactly the problem.