Directed by: Alan J. Pakula
Starring: Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, Paula Prentiss, Earl Hindman, William Daniels, Walter McGinn
The Parallax View opens with an assassination atop the Space Needle in Seattle in which a panel determines was committed by a lone assassin. This isn't the case, of course, and small-town reporter Joe Frady (Beatty), doesn't buy the official version. He begins his search for clues, witnesses, and other players who can fill in the blanks. Frady soon convinces his editor (Cronyn) that a corporation called Parallax trains and finances assassins. Why? To expediently get rid of its political enemies.
The movie works best when it closes in on Joe and begins to feel like a nightmare. Joe steps into a world of being recruited as an assassin, but Beatty isn't entirely convincing as the plot inexorably moves forward to its inevitable conclusion. He doesn't behave like someone who wants to be a paid hitman. If Parallax were worth its salt, they would've spotted him as a pretender right away. It's as if the movie didn't want Beatty's character to get his hands dirty. The movie is a triumph of atmosphere over plot, for only a little while.
The ending is a drawn-out mess in which a shooting takes place in a large warehouse where apparently there is no security detail and the place is a logistical nightmare for such. Joe is, of course, framed as the murderer and the panel featured in the beginning also concludes Joe was the shooter and acted alone. This has also been determined in future movies by future such panels or the media. Then, we get another reporter like Frady who sticks his nose in and the cycle repeats itself.
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