'WRONG IS RIGHT'......THE WORLD'S UP IN FLAMES.....AS SEEN ON TV.........

 Wrong Is Right (1982)

     You can easily figure out how much writer-director Richard Brooks was pissed off and alarmed at the state of the world......a world riddled with terrorism, political chicanery and everyone dying for their 15 minutes of TV fame.....(sometimes literally)

         .....much in the same way as master screenwriter  Paddy Chayefsky was pissed off at the crumbling of both the middle class and American health care (in 1971's "The Hospital") and TV's exploitive dumbing down of the culture (in 1976's 'Network').

          The big difference was this:  Chayefsky could unleash red hot verbal hell in the long explosive monologues he wrote for his characters, filled with corrosive wit and beautifully crafted invective. And he never, ever lost sight of his targets........

          Brooks, a serious man who specialized in literate adaptations of novels ('Elmer Gantry', 'In Cold Blood' ) possessed no such talent for incisive satirical takedowns. But such what his rage at current events, he stepped up to the plate anyway and swung his bat in every direction.........

           To the continue the baseball metaphor, the best Brooks could do was hit so many foul balls that he struck himself out. 

           'Wrong Is Right' ends up as convoluted mess of a political thriller/satire that never makes up its mind about what or who it's mad at. And its occasional stabs at 'Dr. Strangelove' lampoonery are painfully lame and unfunny. 

            Brooks' script, co-written with novelist Charles McCarry based on one of McCarry's thrillers, bounces all over the world as it follows global superstar TV reporter Patrick Hale (a more than game Sean Connery). Hale and his camera, aided by all those communications satellites orbiting the earth, are always johnny-on-the-spot for every catastrophic world-wide event. 

             Hale, a hardened cynic who knows no one believes anything unless it happens to TV, finds himself tangled up with suicidal Arab terrorists, greedy oil brokers, double talking duplicitous CIA operatives, and the usual soulless D.C. politicos trying to spin their way to win the next election.  All in all, a toxic mixture that brings the U.S. to the brink of nuclear Armageddon on New York City.....(which the film's special effects techies depict in miniature.). 

               The film never gets control of its many plot threads leading to a confused, confusing scrapheap of short choppy scenes that never hang together as a whole. At one point, a perfect example of the film's haphazard approach, Connery's Hale expresses disgust at the worldwide immorality of the death and destruction he races to cover. But then again, he frequently revels at the seductive power of TV to grant him an all access pass to the world's powerbrokers and the horrors they leave in their wake......(Who cares if the world's getting flushed down the crapper as long those overnight ratings climb....)

              We will say this much about the film (and the only reason it's still worth at least one viewing).......if nothing else, Richard Brooks and Charles McCarry were uncannily prescient in their predictions of a President arranging adventurous 'incursions' into the Middle East based on false pretenses 

             But sadly, while aiming its missiles at manipulated global chaos, 'Wrong Is Right' drowns and sinks with all hands in the chaos of its execution. It's not wrong about what's wrong.....but it's incapable to telling it right. 

              1 star (*).