Martin Bradley One of the best of all conspiracy theory movies and a brilliant political thriller, "The Parallax View" came from a time in the mid-seventies when American cinema appeared to have reached a peak in providing intelligent, grown-up entertainments that were both fun to watch and which required bringing your brain into the cinema with you rather than leaving it in the foyer with the popcorn. It begins with a political assassination on top of Seattle's Space Needle. At this stage the audience doesn't have apply any guesswork; we can see the set up. We can see the killing of the apparent assassin and we can see the real assassin get away.Step forward three years to a grubby Warren Beatty, who was there that day working as a reporter and who is now being contacted by another reporter, (Paula Prentiss in a tight cameo), who was also there and now fears for her life. It seems almost anyone who was there at the time is already dead; cue Warren off to uncover the truth. If the plot feels reasonably predictable, the treatment is superb. Alan J Pakula was the director, working from a screenplay by David Giler and Lorenzo Semple Jr and the great Gordon Willis was the cinematographer, working a lot more in the light for a change and there's an excellent supporting turn from Hume Cronyn as Beatty's editor and a brilliant one from the underrated William McGinn as the guy tasked with recruiting assassins. There's a twist in the tale you will probably see coming but it doesn't lessen the effect. As I said, this is a smart piece of multiplex entertainment from a time when movies like this were commonplace. Those, as they say, were the days.

jimbo-53-186511 Joseph Frady (Warren Beatty) is an investigative journalist who is tipped off that the assassination of a senator 3 years ago may have involved more than one person. As he delves deeper, Frady soon learns that several reporters present at the assassination are also dying in suspicious circumstances and learns that all these people are being targeted by the Parallax Corporation - a corporation who specialises in recruiting assassins. Determined to expose this organisation, Frady makes the bold decision to enrol in the Parallax Corporation.Dubbed as one of the films in Pakula's so called 'Political Paranoia Trilogy' The Parallax View is, for me, the lesser of the 3 films in this trilogy - the other two films being Klute and All The President's Men. The opening sequence is impressive and it's nice to see one of America's lesser known landmarks - the Seattle Space Needle playing an important role in the film. It's a shame really that after the impressive opening sequence that Pakula chooses to take his foot off the gas and turns most of the film into a rather dull and talkative affair with very little actually going on. Even when Pakula does show something actually happening he still had a tendency to draw some scenes out for way too long. Two examples of this are the scene where Frady has a fight in the pub which just seemed to go on forever, came out of nowhere, and made absolutely no sense. The second overlong sequence was when Frady was at Parallax Corporation bootcamp and they are showing him their 'training video'. That particular sequence ran for about 10 minutes with many of the same clips being replayed again and again and again. Why??? It just made me cringe.Another problem I had with this film was Warren Beatty; part of the problem lay with his rather lifeless performance and it also didn't help that his Joe Frady had no discernible character. As a thriller it wasn't particularly thrilling and never really gripped me and the investigative aspect doesn't get enough focus for one to become truly vested in the story.There are one or two good parts in the film and I did like the way that the film did at least have a rather non conformist Hollywood ending. However, these things are not enough to save this film and despite the fact that it only runs to just beyond 90 minutes I still found myself bored to tears watching it and was praying for it to end.

h-christen What a ridiculous movie. If you try to follow what is happening your head begins to spin. Is it a movie from the early seventies when directors were still on acid? There is no head or tail, when it is finished you ask yourself "What was that all about?" Well, there was a head and tail, but it didn't make sense. Only for the paranoid minds perhaps...I must admit, the cinematography was good. It reminded me in the ending of Playtime from Jaques Tati, but that doesn't make it a good movie. The story was a mess in my opinion, and our hero just hopped from one scene in another without any coherence. I have nothing against a conspiracy thriller, but make it intelligent and thrilling, this was boring and impossible to follow the actions of the main character.If you haven't seen it yet, do not read further!Spoilers!!There is an assassination on a certain senator Carrol. Austin Tucker is his adviser. Witnesses are a television reporter Lee among many others. 3 years! later Lee comes to newspaper reporter Frady, hysterically claiming they want to kill her. Already six witnesses were killed according to her. And of course she is killed not long after this meeting, so Frady dives deeper. He gets into an awful bar fight with a deputy, but the sheriff sits just grinning: well done boy... After that it seems like Frady and the sheriff are well known buddies for a long time. But the sheriff wants to kill him (why?), which doesn't work, quite the opposite, so Frady breaks into the sheriffs house and finds something about Parallax!After a meeting with some guy that plays a computer game with an ape he does a ridiculous test in a chair in the parallax company. After that he is suddenly in a plane and tries to write something about a bomb with soap on a mirror and suddenly he is home again. In the meantime his head editor from the newspaper is murdered by a food delivery guy. What the ...Everything appears to be happening suddenly, with no reason, background, motive, or how it is possible. For instance, he is suddenly on a boat with Austin Tucker, (how did he find him?) Austin and his bodyguard smile at each other as if they were going to kill Frady, but suddenly the boat explodes and Frady is blown into the water and the next moment he is safe at the office of the newspaper. How the h... did he manage to do that? Is he a well trained ocean swimmer and a bomb survivor? Who placed the bomb and why? And so on and so on...Then he is supposed to meet his handler, (undercover) Ben Harkins, but in the hotel he gives Ben some weird instructions, to go to Hawaii. Then he asks for a mister Jack Younger the fellow who recruited him for parallax. Then some guys from security, or fake security, (I don't mind, my head spins already) watch him, ... And suddenly we have to watch a march band and a mysterious Mr Hammond is killed.A committee decided that Frady was responsible for the murder of Hammond, just like they decided who was responsible of the murder of senator Carrol in the beginning. Curtain...As we in The Netherlands say, I couldn't make chocolate of it...

phlipsidecreative The 1970's saw an outpouring of conspiracy movies in response to the assassinations of the Kennedys and Dr. King plus the revelations of the Watergate scandal. This is easily one of the lesser contributions. The script is vague, the plot (thin as it is) doesn't go much of anywhere and cinematic style gets in the way of storytelling.While visually quite interesting, the effort is wasted on cookie cutter performances by a talented cast. Warren Beatty is riffing on his hip, iconoclastic rebel character. Sadly, he doesn't bring anything new or interesting to it this time. There's no character development for him, nor any of the other characters here. We learn nothing about the mysterious Parallax Corporation except that like many other movie evil corporations, they believe that the best way to cover up an assassination is to kill as many other people as possible.The pacing is slow, the storytelling is weak, even the cinematography, while impressive, is seriously dated looking.Trapped inside for a weekend? There are worse movies to spend a couple hours with. But if you have any other options, go for them.