This really is a movie I should see at least three more times before commenting on it. The production values are fantastic and I was entranced by the music but all of that is incidental to the intelligence and moral strength of Edward R. Murrow. He never smiles, he's always smoking, he reads his reports to the nation without bothering to look at them, and he is utterly compelling in every scene he's in. Now that I'v seen this movie I'm sad David Straitharn lost the Oscar to Phillip Seymore Hoffman. George Clooney, who played Fred Friendly, is affable and forgetable as Ed Murrow's sidekick. He has nothing like the presence of Mr. Straitharn, who dominates the movie and rightfully so.
The movie as a whole is refereshing. It's not bombastic or accusatory, it's not angry, there's no yelling, no partisanship and it dosn't crow about how right we all are and how crazy Senator MacCarthy was. It just shows us the fear of the times and how Mr. Murrow and his colleagues risked everything to question the authority that was terrorising the nation.
I loved it. Highly recommended.
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