Starring: Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts, Seth MacFarlane, Sienna Miller, Annabelle Wallis
Roger Ailes was exiled from CNBC in the mid-1990's and by hook or by crook, created Fox News and turned it into a cable ratings juggernaut which speaks to a rabidly conservative audience...whether you like it or not. Your opinions may vary on the content of Fox News, but you can't deny its influence on the political landscape. Ailes, as we learned later, conducted a work environment of intimidation, harassment, and power plays, mostly against the female employees. His "affair" with associate Laurie Luhn (Wallis) is borderline sexual slavery, which causes Laurie to mentally break down and start popping pills. Whistleblower Gretchen Carlson (Watts) brought Ailes tumbling down, but the Fox News empire remains stronger than ever.
If you're a Fox News watcher, you may think of Ailes as a visionary who gave those who perceived "a liberal media bias" a safe haven for their views. If Fox News represents all you abhor, then your reaction to Ailes demanding his newscasters refer to Barack Obama as "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" is appropriately less than enthusiastic. But we see the arc of how Fox News shaped the political game, beginning with 9/11, throughout the Obama administration, and through the Trump election. Ailes did not play fair, and it set the tone for the shift in Republican tactics in the past decade, which were never more evident than the 2016 Presidential election, which Hillary Clinton lost due to equal parts complacency and defensiveness. She seemed to be playing catch-up to Donald Trump in every facet of the campaign, and it cost her. If you don't believe Roger Ailes and Fox News didn't fan these flames or even help start the blaze, then you're not paying attention.
Russell Crowe plays Ailes with robust bombast. He's not just the loudest voice, but the shrewdest, most paranoid, and most devious as well. While others play by unwritten rules of conduct, Ailes obliterates the written and unwritten rulebook for his own selfish purposes. He achieves more satisfaction from power than he does in any personal relationship, including his subservient wife (Miller), who transforms into an Ailes minion before our eyes, and Laurie, whom he demeans through constantly self-serving sexual demands.
Ailes' created a culture which proved to be so toxic that it led to the dismissal of himself, Bill O'Reilly and others from Fox News, and this in turn led to the birth of the #MeToo movement, which many Fox News watchers would ironically deride, but fail to see how their favorite network played such a huge role in its creation. Rupert Murdoch would eventually cede editorial control to Ailes around 2009, which led to both record ratings and the toxicity which followed. The dynamic between Murdoch and Ailes is interesting. Murdoch is the boss, but Ailes seems to wield more power even though he is technically the underling, mostly because Ailes seeks out conflict like a tenacious bulldog, while Murdoch would prefer to rake in money with as little controversy as possible. This is how The Loudest Voice depicts the Murdoch-Ailes relationship, with creative license coming into play, I would bet.
The Loudest Voice is unsettling, frustrating, but never boring. We are a witness to Fox News setting the pace for this nation's political discourse, and we are helpless to do anything but sit by and watch it unfold piece by piece. Depending on your viewpoint of the polarizing Ailes, he is either a TV genius (as he would be proud to tell you if you asked him), or a monster who abused his power and preyed on women simply because he could. It's impossible to separate Ailes' influence from his terrible behavior, which The Loudest Voice wisely doesn't attempt to do. I find it isn't possible to separate Ailes' influence and creation from the means he utilized to obtain his goals. Others may differ, but hopefully there are few who do.
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