Year: 1974
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Screenplay: David Giler and Lorenzo Semple Jr., based on the novel The Parallax View by Loren Singer
Starring: Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, William Daniels, Paula Prentiss
Running Time: 102 minutes
Genre: Thriller
Three years after a politician is murdered at the Seattle Space Needle, the witnesses seem to be dying of apparent accidents or natural causes. Television journalist Lee Carter (Prentiss) who witnessed the murder is convinced that the witnesses are being deliberately killed, and that she is next on the list. She contacts her ex-boyfriend, hard-bitten newspaper reporter Joe Frady (Beatty) for help. Joe doesn't believe her at first, until Lee dies of an apparent drug overdose. Joe starts to investigate and finds himself drawn into a complex and dangerous conspiracy, centred around the sinister Parallax Corporation.
As American as apple pie
Based on the 1970 novel by Loren Singer, with an intelligent and sometimes darkly funny screenplay by David Giles and Lorenzo Semple Jr., The Parallax View is a surprisingly bleak work, with a genuinely shocking conclusion, but it still has all the ingredient of an exciting thriller: fights, chases (including an impressive car chase), and a desperate race against time. Warren Beatty gives an impressive performance as the tough, but surprisingly vulnerable reporter, whose silver tongue and quick fists do little to top him quickly getting out of his depth. Director Alan J. Pakula, who had previously made Klute (1971) and would go on to make All the President's Men (1976) creates an atmosphere of chilly menace. Throughout the film there is this constant sense of a vast conspiracy, even the way the film is photographed, with many scenes being viewed from a distance, or from overhead, putting the viewer in the place of a spy observing the proceedings. The film's most impressive set-piece is the striking assassin training sequence where a series of fragmented still images and words are flashed in quick sensation. Following the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, not to mention Watergate and Richard Nixon, the 1970s were an era of bleak political thrillers, but the theme of paranoia, alienation and conspiracy still feels very much of the moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment