WUSA (film)

Plot

Rheinhardt, a cynical drifter, gets a job as an announcer for a Right Wing White supremacists radio station, WUSA in New Orleans. Rheinhardt is content to parrot WUSA's reactionary editorial stance on the air, even if he does not agree with it. Rheinhardt finds his cynical detachment challenged by a woman he meets in a bar, Geraldine, and by Rainey, a neighbor 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.

Bingamon, the station's owner, is sponsoring a hate rally that draws a protest from black militants. Rainey attempts to assassinate Bingamon, but after he misses and accidentally wounds someone else, Rainey is attacked by the crowd and beaten to death. In the chaos, drugs end up in the possession of Geraldine, who is arrested by the police and later hangs herself in the jail cell. A disillusioned Reinhardt packs his bags and leaves town.

Reception

Anthony Perkins was nominated for best supporting actor of the year by the National Society of Film Critics.

Paul Newman called it "the most significant film I've ever made and the best."

Roger Greenspun of the New York Times said in his review: "If it were an ordinary bad movie (and it is a very bad movie), WUSA might, in spite of the distinguished names, and less distinguished presence, of its leading actors, be dismissed with no more than a nod to the tension between Rosenberg's ponderously emphatic direction, and Robert Stone's ponderously allusive screenplay. I suspect Stone wins out, for WUSA feels more like poor theater than poor moviemaking—so, that it continually suggests a failed version of The Balcony, even though it strives to fall short of The Manchurian Candidate. ... Despite its obsession with collecting evidence, and its handy school of pseudo-documentary, WUSA fights unreal battles with an unseen enemy. Lacking either the grace of art of the vitality of guerrilla theater, it can offer only the coarsest nourishment—and only to the elaborately self-deceived."