Rating: 
Summary: Eric Bogosian is fantastic
Review: "Talk Radio" is a claustraphobic film taking place, for the most part, in a lonely Texas radio station where outspoken personality Barry Champlaign (Eric Bogosian, in a masterful performance) presides over the early-morning airwaves. Much like Howard Stern (and it's no coincidence that Champlaign has Stern's same hairdo in flashback scenes), he's a controversial figure who fields phone-calls from the bigoted, insipid white trash that infest the land around him, and occasionally receives threats in the mail. "Talk Radio" is like Bogosian's "SubUrbia," in that the action is set in one specific place, and the plot is virtually non-existent. But the characters are so well-defined and the dialogue so tightly-written that the movie actually speeds along quickly, with Champlaign's blunt barbs keeping you on the edge of your seat (a monologue near the end has Champlaign looking at his microphone as if it's his worst enemy). We witness his growing tension as the threats pile up around him, his ex-wife walks out of his life, and a national syndication deal goes awry; his only coping mechanism is transforming the frustration into the icy advice and conversation his callers are looking for. "Talk Radio" is essential viewing for fans of Bogosian or Oliver Stone. Very well-done.
Rating: 
Summary: Powerful, Entertaining, And Dark.
Review: "Talk Radio" is one of the most strangely dark films I have ever seen. Is it a surprise that it was directed by a genius like Oliver Stone? Not at all. The screenplay serves more as a study of our culture and the obsession people get with fame. The wierder and darker the show is, the more people will watch it, and the more famous you will become. Eric Bogasian gives a very-good performance and that annoys us and still keeps us watching. "Talk Radio," lacking action and special effects, is still thrilling and entertaining. I never strained from paying attention to this movie. In a sense, it's informative. In another sense, it's darkly comic. Stone has a wonderful knack for showing the dark colors of society and of the people that inhabit that society. This is a masterpiece in craftsmanship, writing, acting, and thought-provoking.
Rating:
Summary: the sharp and lonesome voices without faces
Review: Barry Champlain (Eric Bogosian) is a tortured talk-radio host who feeds off the moral cesspool of his audience. His caustic worldview consumes his show and life and leads to a dazzling showdown between each; the pollution of his degenerate listeners ultimately being his own to claim. With creeping tracking shots and the camera circling Champlain like a vulture watching its prey, the main set of the radio station is kept alive. Bogosian gives a mesmerizing performance; the sharp and lonesome voices without faces over the airwaves strike a deep chord.
Rating:
Summary: Eric Bogosian goes out in a blaze of glory!!
Review: Eric Bogosian (Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, Wonderland) stars as Dallas Talk Show host Barry Champlain who is in his own little world as he pushes aside his ex-wife and coworkers and just presses peoples buttons so he can go furthur into better things in radio, though his life isnt that great. Soon he becomes hated and threatened by the fans as he digs himself a deeper hole with his show. Eric Bogosian turns his stage play into a movie which delivers the goods left and right. Fierce, insane, brusingly humorous and very well acted indeed. Eric Bogosian goes out in a blaze of glory lacing his peformance with everything he's got. A true Oliver Stone (The Doors, Alexander) tour de force in full bloom. Also starring Ellen Greene (Pump Up The Volume), John C. McGinley (Tv's Scubs, Se7en), Alec Baldwin (The Aviator, The Cooler), John Pankow (The Object Of My Affections, Tv's Mad About You) , Michael Wincott (The Crow, Along Came A Spider) and Leslie Hope.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: Eric Bogosian is in my opinion one of the most influencial contemporary playwrights and Oliver Stone, well of course, one of our greatest directors. Oliver Stone has always been an authentic and honest artist and proves it with this film made with Bogosian's rough, hard words and story. The proof of how genuine Stone and Bogosian are, is the fact that Bogosian was not gonna take an other actor than himself to play Barry Champlain and Stone took the risk of having Bogosian support the whole picture, which he does brilliantly. Talk Radio has so many underlying themes. It is mainly a story of self destruction, but adresses many questions about the power of media, the power of public opinion, and freedom of speech. Why do people listen to radio jocks that go beyond vulgarity or meanness or whatever? Why are the ones that find it the most scandalous the faithful listeners? Barry Champlain is in my opinion one of the most powerful characters, and I swear that if I had been born a man, I sure would have played him on stage. Oliver Stone, as he did, in other movies, portrays a situation to have his audience question it. People how love truly Natural Born Killers, for example, love it for the meanings through it. The ones that look at it without seeing all the layers misunderstand it. Same goes for Talk Radio. A must see, in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Eric Bogosian at his Best
Review: Eric Bogsian may just be the most underated actor of our time. Eric plays an argumentitive and controversial radio talk show host in Dallas, one that was typical of the 70's and 80's AM band. This movie borrows some story line from the book "Talked to Death" which is about the late Denver host Allen Berg who was murdered. Oliver Stone brings this to us in hardcore movie fashion where on air lights are bright and groupie visitors are suspicious. This film identifies the pain behind the genius of the talk radio host by letting you into his out of control life. It's not about the shock comedy Howard Stern type talk show although much of Bogosians character is very shocking and sometimes funny. Most of all he is troubled, angry and can only be compared to the tv host of the 70s movie "Network" with Faye Dunaway. Bogosian is obsessed with the worlds faults and gives his listeners some awful tasting medicine. The actors who play the callers are interesting to say the least, as they sound so real at times expressing their discord and hurt feelings. The radio talk show type here is not trying to be funny but trying to change the world. Maybe you've heard them before. Please note that since this release both sports talk and comedy talk have succeeded. In the movie you hear an announcer say "Everybody loves to Talk". More apparently, They like to listen. The ending is predictable but still surprising. This movie is not for everybody but it's damn good!
Rating:
Summary: Amazing piece of cinema
Review: Having worked for many years in radio, I will always remember the first time I saw this movie in the theaters. I was blown away. Although this film was directed by Oliver Stone, it really is Eric Bogosian's baby. Based on the Bogosian's one-person show which itself was based on the book "Talked to Death : The Life and Murder of Alan Berg", the movie tells a gripping story of power, control and hate. You'll never listen to talk radio the same way after you watch this wonderful film.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing piece of cinema
Review: Having worked for many years in radio, I will always remember the first time I saw this movie in the theaters. I was blown away. Although this film was directed by Oliver Stone, it really is Eric Bogosian's baby. Based on the Bogosian's one-person show which itself was based on the book "Talked to Death : The Life and Murder of Alan Berg", the movie tells a gripping story of power, control and hate. You'll never listen to talk radio the same way after you watch this wonderful film.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie
Review: Intense, provocative and well acted, this film centres on talk show host who sparks a love-hate relationship with his callers who keep ringing him in despite all of the constant abuse he gives them. Naturally he starts getting death threats because he's a Jew and is about to become a big time radio personality all over America. The ending as is said here is a tad bit predictable but that doesn't make it any less shocking. A good film and I was surprised it was directed by Oliver Stone considering the pile of a mess he made of Natural Born Killers. Good and well worth your money
Rating: 
Summary: Harsh Static
Review: Oliver Stone, Eric Bogosian: two self-important, index-finger-jabbing blowhards who were fated to collaborate. Back in the 80s, both of them were fast-rising up and comers, much lauded by the leading lights of the hipoisie. Time has not been kind to either man's resume, and it's barely more than a decade later: imagine how phony TALK RADIO will look to the Stem Cell Clone Generation in another ten years. The drama on view is essentially a Grand Guignol updating of the old Rod Serling/Paddy Chayefsky PLAYHOUSE 90 model, tarted up with layers of exploitation, confrontation and narcissism. Though the events the movie is based on are true, every second of this loose re-enactment plays false. I don't know what we're supposed to make of Barry Champlaign, the anti-hero of this piece: the way Bogosian plays him, you can't believe this man would make a career in radio to begin with. Bogosian's an interesting-looking actor with a soulful, hyperintelligent quality, but I've yet to seen him in a role where he's not Eric Bogosian playing himself: it's as if he thinks himself out of an actual performance. Here, he's so ludicrously pent up with a viper's nest of cross-loathings - for his job, his listeners, his coworkers and himself - you can't feel any real empathy for him, and you don't much care when he's eventually murdered. The laboriously heavy hand of Stone is evident as well in the callers to Bogosian's talk-show. Every one of 'em come off as the standard liberal nightmare vision of that regrettable stretch of parking-lot representing America between the coasts: relentlessly unintelligent, stunted emotional cripples with four teeth in their heads and Confederate-flag decals on their pickups. The message being sent - one we've heard and HEARD by now - is that these people, boobs at best and evil incarnate at worst, have guns and must be stopped. Never mind that every degrading 'caller' is simply an actor reading a script designed to make them sound like warped, gone-astray versions of the 'little people' so obnoxiously patronized by the likes of Chayefsky and Serling a generation earlier - Eric and Oliver would never slant the material to make the boobs look worse, and the soul-searching Barry Champlaign more Christ-like in his torments as he dies for our beer-drinking, football-watching sins....would they? The new cliche about things like TALK RADIO is that they're only reflections of society, not a writer's invention, transcribed by Artists shotgun-married to the Truth, no matter how painful it may be to people who, by convenient accident, already find said Artists puerile and propagandistic. It's a convenient cop-out redolent of the kind of bet-hedging unique to the boho crowd: if you love it, I'm the genius responsible; if you hate it, don't look at me, it's YOUR world - I'm only describing what I see. And the funniest touch in the movie is Champlaign's fending off the pressure of the 'suits' to tone his act down, lest he blow his shot at going national. Tone it down, huh? We live in an culture now dominated by Howard Stern, the WWF, 'Jackass' and 'The X Show', and these guys want me to believe that excessive pandering by a media figure HURTS his career opportunities?
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