Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Seen it over 10 times and I still dont understand the story. Not that it is complicated, but lots of events just deliberatedly arent explained at all. This only adds to the suspense though, because man oh man, do I get fascinated watching this slowburning thriller. It has no happy ending and it is not an entertaining funny action thriller at all. So be warned. I guess it is best suited for lovers of movie classics of the seventies, who can appreciate the finer qualities of dark moods and depressing suspense above simple thrilling entertainment. The story is about a journalist portrayed by Warren Beatty, who witnesses an assasination on a senator. Afterwards mysterious deaths start occuring to the few people who witnessed this assasination on the senator. "Somebody is trying to kill me". That's the plot of this paranoia thriller. The struggle of this journalist to find out, who is behind the killings of the witnesses is the nucleus of this very suspenseful story."The Parallax View" is without a doubt the ultimate seventies paranoia thriller. This "paranoia" label was given to numerous other classics too ("Marathon Man", "All the President's Men", "The Conversation") from that period in which some kind of evil agency was out to kill somebody for knowing too many secrets. All these classics were truly the best of independent american cinema from that famous movie making period in which among others also "The Godfather" emerged. I particularly mention "The Godfather" because the photographer of "The Godfather", the famous Gordon Willis, was also used for "The Parallax View". Gordon Willis is known as "the master of darkness", because of his magnificent sub dark lighting techniques. "The Parallax View" looks like a documentary sometimes, coming close to a true to life portrayal of political assasination events that happened in history. Gordon Willis and Alan J. Pakula are to be thanked for that fascinating realism.Director Alan J Pakula truly made his masterpiece with "The Parallax View". The portrayal of evil powers in the dark which control all politcs is done in a way few directors have ever achieved since then. Brilliant classic!

THE PARALLAX VIEW is another gripping conspiracy thriller from the decade that made so many of them. Warren Beatty plays a crusading reporter investigating the mysterious deaths of a number of his peers, deaths which may or may not be connected to the murder of a politician at which he was present a few years previously. This film is different from the others I've watched, far less complex in terms of plot. It's very much a visual experience which reaches a high in a montage of imagery which attempts to get across what it feels like to be brainwashed. Beatty is a solid lead and there are some good supporting players like Anthony Zerbe and Hume Cronyn, while the level of suspense and paranoia is high. There are also some great set-pieces, particularly early on, with the only let down being the bit where they don't have the money to show a plane exploding. The film's air of ambiguity helps a treat too.

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.

If you are given to conspiracy theories than you should look no further than The Parallax View which goes way over the top in saying that all the assassinations in that spate of them and also attempts were the product of one group of secret conspirators who are our permanent government. The extremes should love this film from the John Birch Society to the WikiLeaks fans.Warren Beatty is a reporter for a Seattle newspaper and is on the scene of an assassination of a U.S. Senator and presidential candidate at the Space Needle. By the way talk about a place with no possible getaway.A few years later Paula Prentiss comes to him scared out of her mind in that several witnesses of said assassination are becoming dead themselves. Shades of the Warren Report. Beatty investigates further and finds an outfit called the Parallax Corporation which seems to be looking for loner types who can be manipulated. The image of Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan etc. Seems like our assassins seem to be cut from the same mold.What can I say, but Beatty becomes a victim of his own story.I saw The Parallax View when it came out in theater years ago. It's still for the paranoid minded among us. I think it's a way bit much, but who knows with today's news and our president considered a Moscow stealth candidate.Stranger things have happened.