Richard Brooks ended his big-screen career on a low note with Wrong Is Right, a wannabe satire of the news media in the age of mass TV entertainment, based on Charles McCarry’s novel The Better Angels.
The tale is set in the near future, when global terrorism runs rampant and TV news has sunk to the level of sleazy tabloids.
Sean Connery plays Patrick Hale, a globe-trotting reporter, who has ventured to the Arab country of Hegreb to interview his old acquaintance, King Ibn Awad. (Ron Moody)
Upon learning that the President of the US might have issued orders for his removal, Awad plans to deliver two suitcase nukes to a terrorist, aiming to detonating them in Israel and the US, unless the President resigns.
In the plot that unfolds, nothing is quite the way it seems, and nobdy could be trusted. Hale finds himself caught between political leaders, Islamic terrorists and revolutionaries, CIA agents and others.
Cast
Sean Connery as Patrick Hale
Robert Conrad as General Wombat
George Grizzard as President Bedford Forrest “Frosty” Lockwood
Katharine Ross as Sally Blake
G.D. Spradlin as Jack Philindros
John Saxon as Homer Hubbard
Henry Silva as Rafeeq
Leslie Nielsen as Franklin Mallory
Hardy Krüger as Helmut Unger
Robert Webber as Harvey
Ron Moody as King Awad
Rosalind Cash as Mrs. Ford
Dean Stockwell as Hacker
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Young Girl
Mickey Jones as Gunman