For once I avoided reviews before seeing a film, and as I take a morning-after gander, I see that George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck is the most overhyped, ineffably praised film I've seen in months and months. The reviews of most every mainstream critic gush and moan over what I found to be a film entirely devoid of the most infinitesimal amount of narrative tension. Sure, it's about something, but even the films in the Rocky franchise managed more dramatic complexity and narrative surprise. I am pleased to see three grizzled veterans like Stanley Kauffmann, Richard Schickel, and Jonathan Rosenbaum were not fooled by the deceptive austerity of black and white. It would have been nice to see why Mr. Murrow began his crusade against McCarthy, but this is taken for granted, as is the formidable tyranny of McCarthy, who comes off as rather puny, nothing but a straw man whose power is already on the decline.

I don't think I'd care so much nor feel compelled to share my opinion were the narrative problems in this film not so egregious. I mean, why bother to tell a story whose outcome we already know unless you're going to make a marginal effort to obfuscate the outcome with tension and a three-dimensional conflict?