Review of The Parallax View (1974) by Jon C — 06 Aug 2016

Slow-moving but intense, stylish, visually sumptuous political thriller.

This slow-moving but intense, stylish, visually sumptuous political thriller directed by Alan Pakula (best known for Klute, All the Presients Men, and and Sophie's Choice) somehow combines a preternatural clarity with a misty dissonance: it's like someone shattered the 1960s political assassinations and jumbled them together into a dream. Warren Beatty is great as the callow but dedicated reporter whose curiosity gets him in waters farther over his head (on some occasions literally) than he could have imagined. Several of the film's aspects are, and are probably intended to be, reminiscent of Hitchcock: the way things and people are not as they seem, and a final explosion of menace in the cheerful public environment of a political rally. One of the key films in the political conspiracy theory genre. The Paramount standard DVD is of good quality, but this film really should be remastered and put on Blu-Ray.