When veteran anchorman Howard Beale is forced to retire his 25-year post because of his age, he announces to viewers that he will kill himself during his farewell broadcast. Network executives rethink their decision when his fanatical tirade results in a spike in ratings.
This is a bawdy, stops-out, no-holds-barred story of a TV network that will, quite literally, do anything to get an audience.
– A.D. Murphy,
Variety,
13 Feb 2001
fresh:
Network can be faulted both for going too far and not far enough, but it's also something that very few commercial films are these days. It's alive.
– Vincent Canby,
New York Times,
20 May 2003
rotten:
Chayefsky was apparently serious about much of this shrill, self-important 1976 satire about television, interlaced with bile about radicals and pushy career women, and so were some critics at the time.
– Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Chicago Reader,
26 Jun 2007
fresh:
The film's never been more timely.
– Chris Nashawaty,
Entertainment Weekly,
17 Feb 2011
rotten:
The plot that Paddy Chayefsky has concocted to prove this point is so crazily preposterous that even in post-Watergate America -- where we know that bats can get loose in the corridors of power -- it is just impossible to accept.