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WUSA
Rheinhardt, a cynical drifter, gets a job as an announcer for right-wing radio station WUSA in New Orleans. Rheinhardt is content to parrot WUSA's reactionary editorial stance on the air, even if he doesn't agree with it. Rheinhardt finds his cynical detachment challenged by a lady friend, Geraldine, and by Rainey, a neighbour and troubled idealist who becomes aware of WUSA's sinister, hidden purpose. And when events start spinning out of control, even Rheinhardt finds he must take a stand.
Release : | 1970 |
Rating : | 5.5 |
Studio : | Paramount, |
Crew : | Director of Photography, Stunts, |
Cast : | Paul Newman Joanne Woodward Anthony Perkins Laurence Harvey Don Gordon |
Genre : | Drama |
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Reviews
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
Not lousy, but rather heavy-handed and didactic play on political morality, allegedly set in the modern age. Paul Newman is an indifferent drifter in New Orleans who finds employment at a local radio station whose broadcasts double strictly as a platform for right-wing political beliefs; soon, the extremists for which Newman works have the city riled up in a hotbed of political tension. Adapting his novel "A Hall of Mirrors", Robert Stone writes dialogue and situations which feel curiously dated or clichéd, like the leftover pickings from a movie made some twenty years prior; as a result, the characters fail to emerge. Newman, at one point in his career, cited this picture as his very best, though he's not very good in it, and neither is co-star Joanne Woodward (working hard at feigning low-class). "WUSA" has an excellent sense of its location, due to Richard Moore's solid cinematography, yet its high-flown aims to be a controversial rabble-rouser drown in the din of over-exaggerated grandstanding. *1/2 from ****
It is easy to go to 1970's and recapture the era. So many movies wanted to deal with the politics of the time. Parallax View with Warren Beatty, Twilight's Last Gleaming with Burt Lancaster, This movie was part of that attempt. However, unlike the excellent political movies of the 1960's, this movie lacked the quality of writing a Rod Serling and his peers brought to the table. So to truly enjoy this movie,overlook the heavy handed dialogue. Ignore the 1970's film making style and enjoy the excellent cast of actors. For its time it was an excellent movie. Looking at it today I still see the excellence but it has an eerie familiarity to today. Replace WUSA and there staring back at you is Murdoch and his Fox team. That sends a shiver up my spine.
If you like this movie you will love the book it comes from:HALL OF MIRRORS by Robert Stone.This is another example of a book that is so literary it could not really be done justice in a movie.Still I love both the book and the movie.But check out the book for the full experience ofRobert Stone's wit and wisdom.This is my favorite Robert Stone book(Hall of Mirrors)along with his other masterpiece DOG SOLDIERS which was made into the movie WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN. Note: The info here gives the filming location as Louisiana but the final political rally scenes were filmed in Hollywood.
Perhaps because the drama is so overwrought, Newman's acute underplaying is effective Rheinhardt is his most thorough cynic: a failure at marriage and as a musician, he's become a wandering, alcoholic opportunist, so spineless and corrupt he thinks nothing of taking a job as announcer for WUSA At lasta Newman character who's abandoned all ideals, ambitions and principles, who concentrates exclusively on surviving at all costs He's even worse than "Hud," because he realizes his corruption but persists In fact, he uses his self-knowledge to pretend superiorityto laugh secretly at the Neo-Fascists, while working for them He acts cynically and viciously toward liberal Do-Gooders because presumably he "knows the score," although he really envies their idealism; and he rises above it all to a liquor-soaked detachment His only ability is the put-ononce the essence of Harper's charm, now exposed as the weapon of a destructive mind Rheinhardt's first appearancehe drifts into New Orleans, unshaven, tired, defeated, brokeis like Fast Eddie's after his loss to Fats Like Eddie, he picks up a despairing, fallen woman, Geraldine (Joanne Woodward), a former hooker who, like Sarah, is physically and emotionally scarred As always, Woodward flawlessly portrays the fragile, easily hurt woman who is wary of Newman, but who ends up giving him more affection than he can return They have some tender scenes, but with her, as with everyone else, he's most1y indifferent and uninvolved "WUSA" suffers from conversations that sound like speeches, heavy-handed direction, and a paradoxical reluctance really to meet the issues head-on