Wrong Is Right represents Richard Brooks’ shriek of protest at what he sees as the insane, downward spiral of world history over the past decade. Part political satire, part doomsday melodrama and part intellectual graffiti scribbled on the screen, film is impossible to pigeon-hole.
In a style simultaneously literal and surreal, Brooks takes potshots at the CIA, the FBI, presidents Nixon, Carter and Reagan, the military, the Arabs, the oil crisis, international terrorists and television, among many targets.
Sean Connery plays a sort of combination Edward R. Murrow and James Bond, a globe-trotting television commentator who enjoys total access to world leaders of all persuasions.
Basic situation involves an Arab king who seems ready to turn over two mini-atom bombs to a Khaddafi-like revolutionary leader, with the devices to be detonated in Israel, and later New York, unless the US president, who has admitted ordering the killing of the king, resigns from office.
Wild proceedings are packed with convoluted intrigue involving such characters as CIA agents John Saxon and Katharine Ross, maniacal Pentagon rep Robert Conrad, international arms dealer Hardy Kruger and an array of suicidal terrorists who delight in blowing themselves up, as long as it’s covered on television.
