'The Loudest Voice' review: Russell Crowe's full-bodied, one-sided portrayal of Fox News' Roger Ailes

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Former political media consultant Roger Ailes (Russell Crowe) has just been fired from CNBC and is ready for a new challenge. Rupert Murdoch (veteran British actor, director and playwright Simon McBurney) has just the thing — a cable news channel to challenge CNN. Ailes' idea is to essentially counterprogram the rest of the mainstream media with a conservative-leaning network, and the Fox News Channel is born Oct. 7, 1996. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ailes shifts FNC more sharply to the right, turning it into a bullhorn for President George W. Bush's call for a war in Iraq, then later, a battering ram against candidate Barack Obama, whom he instructs his anchors to refer to as "Barack Hussein Obama." Meanwhile, his private life: Ailes' wife, Beth (Sienna Miller), who tends to their vast estate in Garrison, New York, wants another challenge and her husband buys her one, a local newspaper. Ailes has also employed Laurie Luhn (Annabelle Wallis), whose only apparent job is to service his sexual desires. He later makes a fateful pass at Gretchen Carlson (Naomi Watts).

This short-run series is based on Gabriel Sherman's 2014 book, "The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News." It was adapted by Tom McCarthy, who won an Oscar  for the screenplay of 2015's "Spotlight." 

MY SAY In the opening seconds of this seven-parter, Ailes — presumably from the great beyond (he died in 2017 at 77) — declares that he knows "what people are gonna say about" him after he's gone.

Not to disappoint, Roger, but what most people probably said was, "Who?"

Long an object of curiosity and ultimately obsession in the media/political worlds, none of this ever really translated to household name status, including the households of Fox News Channel. There's one obvious reason why: Ailes would never put someone on the air who looked like Roger Ailes, and in his case, he didn't. Like most TV executives, he believed viewers would be less inclined to flip the channel if the anchors they were watching were telegenic, preferably blonde-thin-female telegenic.

"The Loudest Voice" obviously doesn't have a choice in the matter. It's all about Ailes, all the time. Crowe gained weight for last fall's theatrical "Boy Erased," and kept some of that for this role, but not quite enough. He's wearing a fat suit here, while prosthetics have added the extra chin or two. His eyes are a pair of ice-blue marbles that stare out from that well-padded face. When he smiles, he can scarcely manage a rictus. When he walks, he shuffles. When he sits, he protrudes. The transformation is stunning, but the effect — scene after scene, hour after hour — can be numbing. 

People who knew Ailes, or competed against him, or worked for him, or (for that matter) wrote about him over the last 30 years were left no shortage of impressions beyond those physical ones. But Sherman's exhaustive reporting, and later the reporting of The New York Times, ensured one final impression, that of a sadist and serial sexual predator, who drove one of his victims (Luhn) to a breakdown.

This is the Ailes of "The Loudest Voice," and after four episodes (the ones made available for review) that can be numbing, too — or worse. When he drags Luhn into a hotel room for another sordid assignation, you may be tempted to turn the channel. (My advice: Don't necessarily resist the urge.) 

Because Crowe is on-screen for so much of the time, the effect is amplified. He's the miserable boss from hell who launched Fox on his own by collecting a bunch of nobodies to ape his self-styled GOP fifth column. In "The Loudest Voice," they're mostly actors playing real people — Sean Hannity, Steve Doocy, Glenn Beck, Rupert Murdoch — who look nothing like them. In a bewildering omission and missed opportunity, the series doesn't even bother to cast anyone to play Bill O'Reilly. (For some obscure reason, "Family Guy's" Seth MacFarlane plays former Fox PR man Brian Lewis, but if there had been an O'Reilly part, he just might have been perfect for it.)

You now know that "The Loudest Voice" is far from a fun series, but is it an important series? It has the beginnings of one, but the creation of Fox was far more complicated than this allows and, for that matter, so was its creator. Instead, we get the most obvious side to his story, along with the most repellent side. Perhaps that's ultimately — or grimly — fair, but it's not particularly balanced, or engaging.

BOTTOM LINE Crowe is good to a point, but "The Loudest Voice" can be root canal.