Film: The Parallax View

Director: Alan J. Pakula
Genre: Thriller
Source: USA (1974)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Streaming
Grade: B

A solid little conspiracy thriller from the 70s, The Parallax View features Warren Beatty as a reporter who witnesses an assassination. Several years later, a friend comes to him convinced that the story the investigatory commission provided is not true, that there was a bigger conspiracy at play. Beatty dismisses her, but when she ends up dead too, he becomes convinced there might be more to the story.

I still sometimes struggle with the realism of the New Hollywood era, but Pakula is pretty engaging here--at times it feels like a dress rehearsal for the story he'll tell in All the President's Men two years later, with its layers of conspiracy. The movie is clearly the product of a Vietnam-era mindset where trust in government, big business, and the possibility of truth to be victorious have all reached a significant low, and the fist slowly closing around Beatty really does feel claustrophobic at times. The depiction of groups like the Warren Commission, depicted as working in a shadowy void and answerable to no one, may be paranoid, but in our current Snowden/PRISM-tinged world, it also feels like it could have some real resonance. 

The last fifteen minutes or so of the movie are particularly tight; it brought me right back in just when I was thinking the movie might go off the rails. A solid and surprising little thriller.

Alternate Film Title: "Conspiracy: The Movie!"