George Clooney's first film as a director - 2002's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, about game show host Chuck Barris - was admirably ambitious but ultimately unfocused, brought down by Clooney's desire to root the film in reality while simultaneously trying to keep the audience on its toes through the perspective of its main character's insanity.

Clooney's second film as a director - Good Night, and Good Luck, about TV journalist Edward R. Murrow - is just as ambitious, but it's a marvel of precise vision. Shot in crisp black and white and set in only a few rooms at the CBS News headquarters, it has the spare look and cadence of a play and runs an efficient 90 minutes long. (If it were any more minimalist, it would be Lars von Trier's Dogville, with chalk outlines on a soundstage floor in place of buildings.)

It is - to avoid wasting words, since Good Night, and Good Luck never does - one of the year's best movies. Anchored by David Strathairn's measured, dead-on performance, it's a shining testament to the possibilities of powerful filmmaking through fundamental devices like pacing, strong acting and well-placed silences.

It's also one of the best movies that nobody will bother to see. Clooney's fame may help draw some people (he also co-stars as Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly). Positive word of mouth perhaps will, as well (and it's all richly deserved).

But the subject matter - Murrow's on-air battles with Joseph McCarthy over the senator's 1950s anti-communist crusade - may seem inaccessible, especially to the many people who have no idea who Murrow was. And Clooney's aesthetic approach, while visually striking, may seem a bit dry.

Such assumptions would be a mistake. Though it's based on historical events - Clooney wrote the script with longtime friend and collaborator Grant Heslov and frequently uses archival footage of the McCarthy hearings, a wise move that adds authenticity - Good Night, and Good Luck (Murrow's sign-off) reveals Clooney to be an unexpected master of timing and suspense.

He has created an inescapably claustrophobic pressure cooker of a film, and a great deal of that tension comes from Strathairn, giving the performance of a lifetime. Murrow never lost his temper during his criticism of McCarthy on the series See It Now, never made it personal as some television personalities (who shall go unnamed) do now when they feel passionately about an issue.

On the contrary, he spoke in an eloquent, controlled fashion - it was practically poetry, and Clooney and Heslov were smart enough to recognize that in using Murrow's scripts verbatim. Strathairn has mastered Murrow's mannerisms and speech, leaving you hanging on every word and feeling as if you, too, are on the brink of something vital and thrilling.

Besides Strathairn, Clooney has amassed a cast of talented character actors in supporting roles, including Frank Langella as CBS President William Paley, who struggles to balance news and entertainment; and Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson as reporter Joe Wershba and his wife, Shirley, a newsroom assistant to whom he was secretly married. Clooney takes the unglamorous role of Friendly - for which the star is carrying an extra 30 pounds - for himself.

Clearly, it's a topic about which he feels passionate and has a great deal of knowledge. The son of longtime Cincinnati TV news anchor Nick Clooney, he and his family grew up idolizing Murrow. One of the many remarkable elements about Good Night, and Good Luck is the fact that it totally gets newsroom culture - the dark humour, the downtime. It's not all rushing around with footage and scripts seconds before air time, but it is sometimes, and the movie gets that right, too.

And while the film is very much steeped in the details of its time - down to the rampant cigarette consumption that should have anti-smoking groups fuming - Good Night, and Good Luck couldn't be more relevant now. With the threat of terrorism inspiring widespread fear, with reporters and anchors experiencing newfound zeal after the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, with the Big Three network news anchors stepping down after two decades of familiar dominance, going back to Murrow - the man who pioneered socially responsible broadcast journalism - isn't just a stroke of luck. It's a stroke of genius.

Four stars out of four.