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Good Night, and Good Luck
EMAILPRINTWarner Independent Pictures

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 41 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 110 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
George Clooney
Grant Heslov
Directed by: George Clooney
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 7, 2005
DVD: March 14, 2006
Running Time: 93 minutes, B/W
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG for mild thematic elements and brief language
Starring David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Frank Langella, Jeff Daniels, Ray Wise, and Reed Diamond
Good Night, and Good Luck chronicles that real-life conflict between esteemed television newsman Edward R. Murrow (Strathairn) and Senator Joseph McCarthy. (Warner Independent Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
New York Post Lou Lumenick
Vividly re- creates TV news icon Edward R. Murrow's historic face-off with Sen. Joseph McCarthy in devastatingly low-key detail -- is the right movie at the right time.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
It's a passionate, serious, impeccably crafted movie tackling a subject Clooney cares about deeply: the duty of journalism to speak truth to power. It also happens to be the most compelling American movie of the year so far.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The biggest little movie of the year - and one of the best ever about the news media.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
The only things missing from making this showdown worthy of a Western is Murrow's sheriff's badge, a dusty street and maybe a spittoon for McCarthy's infamous invectives.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer
A riveting movie that's as entertaining as it is socially and politically important.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
You go to Good Night, and Good Luck expecting inspiration, and you get it. It's also unexpectedly subtle, tense, and challenging, complex both in its take on its subject and in its craftsmanship. So the movie brings you to your feet - and, at times, to tears.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The other key character is McCarthy himself, and Clooney uses a masterstroke: He employs actual news footage of McCarthy, who therefore plays himself.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
It'll preach mainly to the choir - lazy thinkers won't attend, despite George Clooney's attachment as director and actor - but maybe it'll wake a few sleepers.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
A paragon of subtlety. Yet this message is exactly what we carry out of the theater, and it lingers on with a powerful resonance.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
This is an elegant and stirring entertainment about the hard-drinking, hard-smoking reporters of "See It Now," the show that Murrow and the producer Fred Friendly put together every week.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
He [Clooney] has found a cogent subject, an urgent set of ideas and a formally inventive, absolutely convincing way to make them live on screen.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Couldn't be more unlikely, more unfashionable -- or more compelling.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Langella is terrific in a small but critical role as CBS president William Paley, although the one essential problem with the film is that it never clearly delineates the jobs fulfilled by the cluster of other newsroom employees that are always huddled about.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
David Strathairn, playing Murrow, follows his writers' lead beautifully, delivering a performance that's all understatement on the surface and searing fire underneath.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
In ninety-three tight, terrifically exciting minutes, Clooney makes integrity look mighty sexy.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Like other actors who successfully create a cinematic doppelganger of a real person, Strathairn gets under the character's skin.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
That the film should have the look and feel of a classic teleplay by, say, Rod Serling, is probably no accident -- the style is one more reminder of just how regrettably short of Murrow's vision we've fallen.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
A puzzle: a hermetically sealed period piece so intensely relevant to our current state of affairs that it takes your breath away.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
An unusual and absorbing, if somewhat preachy film.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
A solid achievement, but those in the press who have been trumpeting its greatness may be going in for a bit of self-congratulation. The movie plays very well to the choir.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Good Night, and Good Luck has a small-scale time-capsule fascination, yet its hermeticism is really a form of moral caution -- a way of keeping the issues neat, the liberal idealism untainted.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Good Night, and Good Luck's primary handicap is history itself -- the toe-to-toe televised dialogue between McCarthy and Murrow was, however arguably vital to the Wisconsin senator's eventual retreat, brief and less than epochal. Even so, the wonderfully mustered context wins out.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Many movies these days are too long; this one, at 90 minutes, feels too short. That's because its purpose is so sharply defined: a tight close-up, in black and white, of a single, seminal moment -- a black and white moment -- in American history, and American journalism.
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
It doesn't sacrifice craftsmanship and elegance at the altar of its strong convictions.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
A vital chapter of mid-century history is brought to life concisely, with intimacy and matter-of-fact artistry.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
A passionate and rousing piece of filmmaking--a civics lesson with the punch of a good melodrama.
Read Full Review >Empire Simon Crook
Provocative, principled and richly detailed, this is compelling stuff. Emotionally it’s a little dry, but as brain-food, it’s absolutely invigorating.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Good Night, and Good Luck may be simplified history, but it's almost consistently well-crafted.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
An entertaining slice of American political and cultural history.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The result, then, is good, not great. But it is hard to come by good films about media and politics, and why the intersection thereof matters so much in a democracy.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
None-too-subtly implies Murrow could easily be talking about the present day.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Moviegoers who know their American political history will respond to the film's immediacy and forgive the film's tight focus and narrow view. Anyone hoping for an entertaining drama about newsmen and politics along the lines of "All the President's Men" will be disappointed.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Where "Quiz Show" elevated its story to the level of Shakespearean tragedy, Clooney's film is too lightweight to reach such tragic heights. In part, it's too short--at 90 minutes, including musical interludes and lengthy monologues taken whole-cloth from the historical record, Good Night breezes by effortlessly when it really needs time and space to build up to appropriately epic dimensions.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Though I'm not fully convinced that cool and jazzy is the way to go with one of the great civil-rights battles of 20th-century America, George Clooney's elegantly muted take on Edward R. Murrow's fight with Joe McCarthy offers many riches, notably a wicked character study of Murrow and a sexy homage to the pleasures of teamwork when the team is a bunch of smart-ass liberal reporters making common cause against a wannabe dictator.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Ken Tucker
Clooney may be a specialist in embattled camaraderie--he helped revive "Ocean's Eleven," after all--but as in that caper remake, there's no depth to these characterizations, and Downey and Clarkson are squandered in a goes-nowhere subplot about their secret marriage.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The film adopts, somewhat insidiously, the myth that life was simpler back in 1953 and '54, and it offers Murrow as a lesson for today.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
The film, therefore, is like a child's view of these events, untroubled by complexity, hungry for myth and simplicity.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
There is more to the intertwined stories of Murrow and McCarthy than this simpleminded, rhetorically driven movie begins to encompass.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
Yet the McCarthy/Murrow conflict in the picture is not pressing enough--these days, anyway--to justify the considerable skill expended on it.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Phil Hall
Clooney has littered his film with such a high quantity of mistakes that it is hard to know where exactly to begin finding fault.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 110 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Dick s gave it a10:
Every citizen should see it before they ever vote again. The Bush administration would not have happened if top journalists were as brave as Murrow and his associates.
Cassian J gave it an8:
This is a class movie by a class director full of great subtle performances by the whole cast. Clooney directs and fills a supporting role in this movie based around the media’s response to the McCarthy enquiry. David Strathairn is fantastic in the lead role of television journalist Ed Murrow who leads a one man campaign to show the public the injustice’s of Senator Joe McCarthy. He stands when many would fall withstanding pressures from the network and it’s associated coporations. This is a message that Clooney knows is still completely relevant today (if not more so, if you consider the American television coverage of Iraq). The film is shot in black and white given it a lovely noir type atmosphere, you can almost smell the smoked filled rooms that broadcasters habit. The films is well shot with some real nice stylistic shots that must have leant a sly smile to Sodenberg. These is a slow movie at it certainly helps if you are a fan of Clooney or have an interest in politics and like Clooney lean to the left (which are all plusses for me), but there is also a superb supporting cast who all give fine performances including Robert Downey Jnr (being remarkably restrained) , Clooney himself, Jeff Bridges and Patricia Clarkson matching the boys with the only substantial female role. I will certainly be watching this movie again and I recommend you give it a chance.
cara s gave it a10:
This movie is a fantastic portrayal of the behind-the-scenes view of the courage of Ed Murrow and the media's role in such a crucial time period. This is by all means my favorite movie of all time. I am seventeen years old, so it is hard to find people who write movies that actually have relevence or some substance today. Ed Murrow's actual words were used in this movie, which I am thrilled about, and also the real footage of the McCarthy hearings are also fantastic. This movie is so close to looking at the real thing it gives me chills. Thank you to all the wonderful people who made this movie.
Riren gave it an8:
Unlike some Best Picture nominees at the Academy, Good Night and Good Luck features some actual characters and a plot that isn't forced forward. It benefits from its plot progression being part of history instead of fiction, but still - even as a black and white film in the era of color - is a more genuine piece of film making than you would find in theatres that year. It's weakest points are its grimness and unrelenting moral stance, which inhibit it from exploring or debating these positions. In that sense, it is as much a black and white picture as it is a black and white story. Still, it earns what it makes of itself, and its contemporary political overtones are for the most part subdued enough to be something that could remain worthwhile viewing decades from now.
Shannon P. gave it a3:
Way over-rated. This film presupposes that you know details about McCarthy and Murrow, and that you agree the former was pure evil and the latter a saint. It then invites you to wallow in the resulting pious sentiments. McCarthy may well have been a bad man and Murrow a good one, but this movie lacks the context necessary to show why. It's not so much a story as a self-indulgent exercise in political correctness.
Andrew H. gave it a10:
One of the best films of the year. And my personal pick for Best Picture
Chris R. gave it an8:
This is a tight little gem of a flick, which seems to go out of its way to simply portray the story and reveal the intense hubris and zeal of the real main character (Sen. McCarthy), and the role that the newly canonized media/soma machine known as television played in his misguided crusade. The jazz soundtrack and seemingly tacked-on hidden marriage between Downey and Clarkson serve to subtly illuminate the cultural context of the time period, providing flavor if not real substance. Strathairn's performance is stellar; both subtle and powerful; possibly the best character acting work seen in a long time. Clooney's work is also subtle, but more everyman; he consciously takes on a supporting role which does not shine outright, as if to concentrate the focus on the story itself, and not so much on the supporting cast. Oscar worthy? Not so much, but at least worth admiration, considering his devotion to getting this flick made. The picture shines in its minor, seemingly unobtrusive details; the pen-tap on the leg signaling Murrow that he's live; Murrow watching another television feed while in the midst of conducting an interview, the ever-burning cigarettes (and silly ads to boot) so en-vogue, and the intense, "way-it's-done" shuffling of film canisters and on-the-fly splicing of interview with live overdubs that defined the television news experience long before magnetic video tape was ever used. A slice-of-life journalism piece which never sways from its own crusade or purpose, much like the men and women who did what was right because it was simply their job, and calling, to do so. Refereshing, given today's media glut. All-in-all, well worth watching.
