I was really looking forward to seeing this movie because of all the good reviews and award nominations it received. But I was really disappointed. It’s not a BAD movie per se, but it doesn’t really have a story. It’s like they took a bunch of interesting characters set in a really interesting time period, and then completely failed to do anything interesting with them. It falls flat because there’s no real conflict (other than the huge generalized conflict of Mcarthyism vs. Free Speech) involving any of the characters and there is absolutely no climax. It just peters out after they announce something (I won’t ruin it for anyone who wants to see it) that you know is going to happen 5 seconds after a certain character walks on screen in the beginning of the movie. The only brilliant part of the movie is the dialogue in the newscasts that are delivered by Murrow—but they didn’t even have to write that! It’s the actual dialogue!

The most interesting part of the movie is the rampant smoking and smoking paraphernalia. Ah, the days when there was a stand-up ashtray in every waiting room and newscasters would smoke while delivering the evening news.