Extremely tepid and predictable, "Power 98" has Eric Roberts at his slimy best, manipulating fellow DJ Jason Gedrick for his own purposes. Seeing Roberts sporting a short haircut, instead of his usual mane, is probably the most shocking element of the film. For Eric Roberts fans this might be tolerable entertainment, all others should steer clear. The conclusion especially is a real stretch, and what precedes it not much better. There is brief nudity, very little action, and a story that lacks momentum and credibility. For me, the best part was in the beginning with Roberts and Gedrick doing there "shock jock" routine, after that, it is a steady slide downhill. - MERK
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merklekranz11 January 2014
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Eric Roberts is the new shock jock brought in to revive a flagging radio station. His Howard Stern antics are encouraged to get the station the ratings.
He and Jason Gedrick team up to deliver. Things start to go strange when someone calls the station and confesses to murder. Jon (Gedrick) jumps into a new BMW and calls Cynthia (Leonora Scelfo) for some hot sex after his fiancée (Jennie Garth) gives him grief over the car. Soon, Jon is in over his head and Karlin (Roberts) is over the edge.
Not a complete waste of an hour and a half, but the only great treat came from Scelfo. -
rmax3048234 February 2010Eric Roberts runs a talk radio show in Los Angeles. The show degrades popular culture -- to the extent that anything is left in it to be degraded. The ambitious, muscular, suave Roberts talks about "testicles" and other filthy subjects like "masturbation", which no normal human being knows about. The ratings are pretty good though.
After a particularly crass show, Roberts is congratulated by Jason Gedrick, a nebbish in the sound department, and recruits him as co-host for his new show -- "My Worst Crime" or something like that. The idea is that callers will confess anonymously on the air to rape, beatings, robbings, having a closet full of pantyhose, picking one's nose in public, and other heinous acts.
The best -- or the worst, depending on your point of view -- is realized. The show inflames the public and there are as many outraged protesters as there are confessants. Then a voice hesitantly admits on the air to having killed a woman, naming her and the date of the killing.
This causes Gedrick's hair to stand on end but Roberts dismisses it as a crank call. However, the police determine that a killing exactly like the one described took place, and they begin investigating the show, waiting for the miscreant to call back as he said he would.
The plot gets a little twisted after that and I don't think medical discretion will allow any further revelations. Well, hell, I can add that it ends in a shoot out. All such movies end in shoot outs, so that's not much of a reveal, is it? I must also add that the movie lacks a high-speed car chase that ends in an exploding fireball. I cried like a baby when I realized there would be no such sequence. I also wept a little when none of the dead bodies leaped back to life, but not much, because I really didn't expect the heavy to survive a fall of some dozen stories to the street below. This is known as "poetic justice" because in the film's first scene we see the bad person launch his victim on a similar trajectory.
It's a crime thriller at heart but it's built around a message. Radio talk shows can be faked, misleading, or used as conduits for lies about celebrities or politicians -- and who's to draw the line? And there are other moral considerations that must have occurred to the writers. (How about broadcasting live executions?) Of course not everything conveyed on talk shows is false. I recently learned that Angelina Jolie was really a man in drag. Who'd have thought it?