The film depicts a turning point in the career of Edward R. Murrow (David Straithairn in a revelatory performance), as Murrow uses his TV newsdesk to wage battle against Joseph McCarthy. Now, that whole "Communist witchhunt" thing has bored the life out of me since high school, but subtextually, this is obviously not what GNAGL is really about. As The Crucible used the Salem witch trials to make a statement on McCarthyism, GNAGL uses Murrow's indignant protest of McCarthy to remind good-hearted liberals of what it means to stand up for freedom. The message is clear, but the film is not so much a potshot at Bush's America as a mirror held up to those intellectuals and politicos who believe our freedoms are being constricted: will you or won't you take a real stand? Now, this kind of content might make most people roll their eyes the way I do at anything that happened before I was born. But Clooney has a light touch, so fortunately the deliberate socio-political undertone is not drubbed over the audience's head as in something like Crash. The cast (which includes Clooney as producer Fred Friendly; Frank Langella as CBS honcho William Paley; Ray Wise; Robert Downey, Jr.; Patricia Clarkson; Jeff Daniels; and Tate Donovan … all using their "earnest" faces) is as tasteful and mannered as Clooney himself probably looks on a typical evening, sitting in a tuxedo, sipping a 20-year-old single malt, listening to Dean Martin records. Where GNAGL fails is in its prioritization of message over story. In its attempt to use Murrow as a symbol, it loses Murrow as a person. I'd like to have seen depictions of Murrow's home life, such as him fucking his wife before bed, and after climaxing, telling her "Good night, and good luck" before turning over to fall asleep.
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