WUSA

Year:	1970
Country:	USA
Language:	English
Genre:	Drama, Romance
IMDB:	IMDB Page
Rating:	8.0 Rate
Collection:	Seen It Wishlist
Community:	2 Have Seen


Director	Stuart Rosenberg
Selected Cast	Paul Newman as Rheinhardt
	Joanne Woodward as Geraldine
	Anthony Perkins as Rainey
	Laurence Harvey as Farley
	Pat Hingle as Bingamon
	Don Gordon as Bogdanovich
	Bruce Cabot as King Wolyoe
	Cloris Leachman as Philomene
	Moses Gunn as Clotho
	Wayne Rogers as Minter
	Robert Quarry as Noonan

On DVD & Blu-ray World

DVD

WUSA - Paramount - USA (2011)

Comments and Reviews


Twistin 21st Mar 2016		Rated 8/10 "A perfectly beautiful hustle crumbles at the core." WUSA is an establishment counter-culture product from an era in which directors were given more artistic freedom from the Hollywood system than in the past. And like so many pro-revolution offerings from that generation, cracks in the pavement are also revealed, unsimplifying what modern Hollywood now feeds us as monaural political cosmogeny. Paul Newman is a drifter who is hired as disc-jockey and mouthpiece of an influential right-wing radio station. Joanne Woodward is his girl and Anthony Perkins is Rainey, a social worker investigating welfare statistics. After a conversation with an underground newspaper writer, Rainey learns of WUSA's outrageous agenda to end government funding of the poor. Many one-dimensional stereotypes and rigged optics skew the portrayal of protagonists and antagonists, severely obstructing the plausibility of the story's "right wing conspiracy". That in itself is so far-fetched it's remarkable to find subverted in such a stunningly attractive canvas. The cast is nearly flawless, the dialogue rich and the cinematography opulent. Toss aside the paranoid abnormalities and take in the rare look at late-60's New Orleans, garnished with a talented cast in top form (including a tasty buffet of support players!) Two decades later, Tim Robbins would take a similar path (through an Oliver Stone prism) with Bob Roberts -- again, very visual, but taking unfair advantage of the credulity of his audience. Unlike Robbins' diatribe, Newman delivers a sympathetic and convincing messenger with an ambivalent palette of rebellion inside his own moral core. This dichotomy is stingingly pronounced when delivering his convention speech in the third act -- a scene otherwise embellished with radically manufactured melodrama. Despite the internal flaws, WUSA is a highly recommended experience, a technical showpiece lost in the shuffle from an overflowingly influential era. Director Stuart Rosenberg directed a number of lost gems in the 70's (Move, The Laughing Policeman, Pocket Money, The Drowning Pool -- the latter two also featuring Paul Newman), none of which could put a dent in his success with 1967's Cool Hand Luke. Notable is Lalo Schifrin's score and a good Neil Diamond song, "Glory Road". Also look for a solemn musical performance by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. 4 people found this review helpful. ✔︎ Helpful Review?

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