The film has a purposefully repellent but fascinating quality. Bogosian`s performance, based on his stage play, is spectacularly demented.

As a director, Stone has a way of merging with the point of view of his protagonists, which is to say that his films are as jittery, wired-up and fragmented as they are.

The overall effect is disturbing yet mesmerizing; most of the movie takes place in the radio studio while the hero is on the air, and the moral questions raised by his incendiary brand of broadcasting are left provocatively open.

A fine paranoid drama, claustrophobic and nervous, always moving and cutting.