Review of Quiz Show (1994) by Ian Y — 18 Sep 2010

Fiennes and Turturro both have brilliant turns in this underrated effort from Robert Redford, as much a family melodrama as a meditation on the more dangerous consequences of the immediacy and familiarity bred by televised media. A moral like that may seem quaint in the era of truly immediate information but it doesn't lose much of its impact.

It is also quite amusing to see America shed its "innocence" again and again and again on film. "Quiz Show" is a worthy addition to this pantheon - the familial struggles of son and father Van Doren are a perfect reflection of the combustible relationship between age-old American competitiveness and entitlement. Indeed, it is hard to control the damage once you've tacitly involved 20 million strangers.

My only major complaint? The dreaded "identifiable protagonist" (Rob Morrow...remember him?), perhaps necessary to topple the dominoes but infinitely less interesting than the heavy hitters in the story, all of them wonderfully complex, flawed human beings.