It takes a lot of work to make Bill Murray not remotely interesting. George Clooney obviously spent too much time with his CIA cronies planning the dismemberment of Sudan (South Sudanese now free, how 'bout that?) that he got completely detached from a moviemaking process.
The movie looks like a cheap piece of Cold War propaganda with characters pronouncing poorly written bathetic monologues obviously borrowed from the Voice of America of the "Red Scare" period. America is a force for universal good, Russians are the cartoonish enemy and Germans are so non-soldierly (children warriors or psychopaths) that they evoke compassion or disdain, rather than being presented as a dangerous foe. Of course, no American philanders, even in Paris, or drinks in excess. The only "our" guys killed are those "furriners" (Brit and Frenchman), who are even more schematic than the majority of characters and their death does not register as a tragedy.
The director of "Good Night and Good Luck" stooped to the level of McCarthy-level agitprop. So what? Christian Socialist Dostoevsky returned from the penal colony as anti-Semitic, Prussian-admiring imperialist. Jacobin General Bonaparte became the Emperor Napoleon and... a Catholic. Power, or the illusion of it, makes wondrous transmutations of character.
Massacres in now "free" Southern Sudan.
In fact, the political defeat of McCartyism was mightily helped by the sabotage by academics, business and media figures who secretly gave work and hired blacklisted persons, sometimes at the risk of their personal career. Current crop of these is so toadish with respect to propaganda goals of American Imperium that powers that are that powers that are have nothing to worry about them.
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