Good Night, and Good Luck.
Warner Independent Pictures (WIP) | Release Date: October 7, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
35
Mixed:
5
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
The biggest little movie of the year - and one of the best ever about the news media. Read full review
100
New York PostLou 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
100
NewsweekDavid 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
100
USA TodayMike 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
100
Dallas ObserverJean Oppenheimer
A riveting movie that's as entertaining as it is socially and politically important. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael 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
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger 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
100
Charlotte ObserverLawrence 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
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam 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
90
The New YorkerDavid 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
90
The New York TimesDana 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
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Couldn't be more unlikely, more unfashionable -- or more compelling. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie 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
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
In ninety-three tight, terrifically exciting minutes, Clooney makes integrity look mighty sexy. Read full review
88
PremiereGlenn 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
88
TV Guide MagazineKen 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
88
Boston GlobeTy 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
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Like other actors who successfully create a cinematic doppelganger of a real person, Strathairn gets under the character's skin. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Urgent and stunning movie. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen 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
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter 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
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
An unusual and absorbing, if somewhat preachy film. Read full review
80
SalonStephanie Zacharek
It doesn't sacrifice craftsmanship and elegance at the altar of its strong convictions. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
A vital chapter of mid-century history is brought to life concisely, with intimacy and matter-of-fact artistry. Read full review
80
Village VoiceMichael 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
80
Wall Street JournalJoe 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.
80
SlateDavid Edelstein
A passionate and rousing piece of filmmaking--a civics lesson with the punch of a good melodrama. Read full review
80
EmpireSimon 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
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
An entertaining slice of American political and cultural history. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
None-too-subtly implies Murrow could easily be talking about the present day. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael 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
75
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
70
The Hollywood ReporterRay 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
70
The A.V. ClubNathan 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
70
L.A. WeeklyElla 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
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)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
50
Washington PostStephen Hunter
The film, therefore, is like a child's view of these events, untroubled by complexity, hungry for myth and simplicity. Read full review
50
TimeRichard Schickel
There is more to the intertwined stories of Murrow and McCarthy than this simpleminded, rhetorically driven movie begins to encompass. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan 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
50
The New RepublicStanley 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
20
Film ThreatPhil 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
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