Talk Radio 1988

Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune: As a director, Stone has a way of merging with the point of view of his protagonists, which is to say that his films are as jittery, wired-up and fragmented as they are. Read more

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: The film has a purposefully repellent but fascinating quality. Bogosian`s performance, based on his stage play, is spectacularly demented. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times: Oliver Stone's Talk Radio makes you laugh, makes you mad and keeps you edgily watching for the killers in the shadows. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: If you think you're unshockable, see this film and then see what you think. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Not to put too fine a point on it, Bogosian is prickly, irritable, alienating and overwhelming. Underwhelming, however, is the way that director Oliver Stone has taken monologuist Bogosian's intimate Off-Broadway play and "opened it up." Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Stone wants more. In Salvador and Platoon he found drama to match his message; here he must invent tragedy to suit his spleen. Read more

Vincent Canby, New York Times: Talk Radio... is a nearly perfect example of how not to make a movie of a play. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: The overall effect is disturbing yet mesmerizing; most of the movie takes place in the radio studio while the hero is on the air, and the moral questions raised by his incendiary brand of broadcasting are left provocatively open. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Talk Radio is directed by Stone with a claustrophobic intensity. Read more

Colette Maude, Time Out: Champlain's distorted perspective is compelling, despite Stone's sometimes flashy direction as he attempts to wrest cinematic qualities out of the essentially stagey material. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: Bogosian commands attention in a patented tour-de-force. Supporting performances are all vividly realized, notably Michael Wincott's drug-crazed Champlain fan invited to the studio for a tete-a-tete with the host. Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: Talk Radio has the loony intensity of those impassioned conspiracy theorists who look out at the world and see patterns of corruption spreading in all directions...it's another of Stone's wake-up calls to America. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: It's midnight in America and there's a lot of angry people out there in the darkness. If that's the main point to Oliver Stone's Talk Radio, it's the only one. Read more