Metacritic reviews

The biggest little movie of the year - and one of the best ever about the news media.

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.

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.

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.

In ninety-three tight, terrifically exciting minutes, Clooney makes integrity look mighty sexy.

It doesn't sacrifice craftsmanship and elegance at the altar of its strong convictions.

A vital chapter of mid-century history is brought to life concisely, with intimacy and matter-of-fact artistry.

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.

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.

Clooney has littered his film with such a high quantity of mistakes that it is hard to know where exactly to begin finding fault.