A satire of American news reporting, Covert Agencies, and political system. The theft of two suitcase sized nuclear weapons, and their sale to a terrorist group, leads TV Newsman Patrick Hale on an international chase to track them down, and uncover the twisting maze of apparent involvement of US Government agencies. Wrong Is Right is a Comedy, Drama, Thriller but it also has a black kind of humor that is totally the turn it off point for it. Just the first few seconds of the movie is what took me off the experience and not even Sean Connery's terrific talent can save a film that was bad from the start. Overall i'm sorry but this gets a big F from me..

This early 80s oddity has Sean Connery miscast as Patrick Hale, a TV anchorman cum roving reporter who heads out to trouble spots with this TV camera and little else apparently. I can't really buy Connery in a role that George Clooney would be a shoe-in for today, it belongs more to a Cary Grant than Clark Gable type, Connery isn't smooth enough and doesn't convey the moral ambivalence of a media type. It doesn't fit.My, it's dated. Tootling American soundtrack over long shots of US skyscrapers make it like something out of trash films of the 70s like The Bitch. They don't make 'em like that any more, thank goodness. It also has a truly rubbish opening 15 minutes, where you can't tell it it's meant to be funny or dramatic or not.What redeems it a fair bit is how topical the satire is, as other reviewers have mentioned. Religious fundamentalism in the White House, tensions between the US and the Middle East, supposed weapons of mass destruction, the role of the media in escalating a crisis, plausible deniablity and suicide bombings on American soil all make this fairly relevant and amazingly prophetic. Leslie Nielsen pops up, too.It has its Bondian moments, too, with Connery narrating to the President the consequences of a nuclear bomb dropped in New York in a way that evokes a horror totally absent from his Bond thriller a year later, Never Say Never Again. It is a bit of a shame to see Connery give a finely nuanced performance, with all the vital anger and suspicion that put his Bond a notch above the others imo, in a film like this rather than the actual Bond film he returned for. At times you can really see him as the same guy who was in Diamonds Are Forever - he even has the clear diction he had back then, rather than the rather distracting, distinctive lishp he has from Never Say Never Again onwards.Worth a look for movie buffs, but it's scrappy looking and takes a scattershot approach to its satire. It gets better as it goes on.

This is not Richard Brooks at his best as a movie-maker, but it is a powerful political film, with a great script (written by Brooks)which was wrongly (wrong is right?) dismissed as a "satire" and "comedy" in the early eighties. It is now seen in a very different light, as the whole plot seems to describe the events around the 9/11 attack and the war against terror, Afghanistan and Iraq. Brooks was the last American "cinema author": he wrote, produced and directed many of his works, including several world-class classics. This deserves to be seen as Brook's political testament, and one to be seriously considered and discussed. Why has this movie not been aggressively distributed right after 9/11? The answer might be in the story itself, which is now mixing story and history.

I agree with the positive reviews others have posted. I won't spoil anything for those who have not seen it, but the film is disturbingly accurate to the reality of the past few years (circa 2004). Wrong Is Right is a black comedy and an excellent work of science fiction. The credit goes to Richard Brooks as well as original author Charles McCarry. Based on McCarry's 1979 novel "The Better Angels", Wrong Is Right takes a comedic twist, and touches on topics few could have easily digested during the Reagan Presidency of 1982. The plot revolves around globetrotting news-hound Patrick Hale (Sean Connery), who uncovers a major international crisis, and must contend with a sinister President, the CIA, and international terrorists. The original intent of director Richard Brooks was to illustrate how technology could bring TV news closer to the truth, and exploit it for ratings. Taking essential cues from the novel, Mr. Brooks leads the viewer into a hazy world in which technology and television manipulate reality for personal gains. The movie accurately predicts the rise of cable and satellite TV. It nails the what-ifs of a media outlet (Fox Broadcasting/Fox News Channel come to mind). And it's an early look at how computers and modern technology affect society. The big clincher is that the movie literally provides a twisted take on the Bush Administration - I kid you not. Remember, this movie was made during the Cold War. No one worried about America fighting anyone else but the Soviet Union. Cable television, while gaining steam, was nowhere near as engrossing or developed as it is today. And no one in America cared about suicide bombers. Do yourself a favor and rent or purchase the video/DVD. Enjoy the movie for the spectacle it is. And realize what was science fiction years before is now a freakish parody of today.The acting, the pacing, and the writing are good to great, considering the topic. It gets funnier as the film finishes. Just remember, the cast and crew were on eggshells, as the film itself is groundbreaking. It is a political satire predating its subject matter. And for another generation, it becomes far more familiar and timely than Dr. Strangelove.