Review of The Parallax View (1974) by Mereie D — 03 Sep 2009

Very well made and highly exciting and amusing corruption thriller from the mid-seventies. Pakula has done everything to captivate his audience: the story is good, the suspense holds throughout the entire movie, the music is appropriate and well-timed.

Furthermore, we are presented with a very varied set of scenes and locations (big cities, rural areas with matching natural elements - the scene with the lock is really fascinating - airports, big venues with big shots at grand receptions, etc.

, etc.). I was glued to the screen from the first scene onwards, and it just got better and better. Even run-of-the-mill action scenes are very good (bar fight with people being thrown through windows, etc.

). The underlying message is valuable too, of course. Corruption is out there, and there seems to be nothing anyone can do about it. Here we get to my only point of criticism regarding this film: somehow I would have preferred a better ending, with an explanation as to who was behind all the hits and hired the parallax company to execute them.

A conclusion with Beatty still alive would be more satisfactory, in my opinion, but here we must respect the views of the director, I guess. This is one of those movies containing ample scenes that will remain engraved in my memory, which must be taken as a sign of real quality.

In a word: highly recommended.