Rating: 
Summary: The Hero's Journey To Fool
Review: Reminds me very much of THE WICKER MAN (released that same year of '74) in that both films chart the nightmarish progress of men who are seeking to uncover a mystery and right a great wrong, who must plunge into disorienting environments where none of the rules they adhered to back in the 'normal world' apply; they can't get their footing, and quickly become controlled by events. By the time they realize their every step has been not just watched but directed from the beginning...it's too late.Warren Beatty's Joe Frady, a minor reporter in the Northwest, begins investigating the deaths of witnesses to a political assassination he'd covered three years before. He stumbles upon literature from The Parallax Corporation, an outfit he comes to believe are clandestinely recruiting & training assassins; he decides to penetrate the group as a 'job applicant', armed with a mass-murderer's psych-test responses and a false identity. He has made a slight but fatal error in judgment, however, for Parallax are in the business of identifying and grooming fall guys - custom-built, designer patsies to draw attention from their trained cadre of actual assassins during the deed, then to be killed in the ensuing melee. Ingeniously, Parallax carefully select appropriate moody-loner backgrounds that will satisfy official inquiries into the murder that the killer was a certified strange-o, thus acting alone. The first half of PARALLAX plays like a standard macho action picture: barroom brawls, car chases, grouchy editors, redneck cops, sexually forthright women swarming over the studly maverick hero. Stay with it, however. The second half is obviously the movie Beatty, Pakula and Gordon Willis were after - stark, overwhelmingly visual, mountingly claustrophic yet set in vastness (every interior set is like an aircraft hangar; even the catwalk goes on forever). The car chase bravado of the first hour is long forgotten by this point, with Beatty assuming the holy-fool status of Edward Woodward's stiff-necked policeman in THE WICKER MAN. While it's true the two halves of this film never do fit together comfortably, the nightcap of this double feature ranks among the best moviemaking of the 1970s.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best political thrillers
Review: The idea of corporations brainwashing people into assassins is a creepy one. Watch this movie and you will believe it could happen. Warren Beatty stars in this movie as a reporter who is investigating the convenient deaths of other reporters present at a Senator's death. Twists and turns abound and at the end you are left thinking of the Warren Commission and all the other assassinations of the 1960's. Rent it, you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Thriller.
Review: The Parallax View (1974) came out before Hollywood began to produce slicker, more over-rated political thrillers. In this film, a senator is shot and killed but no one saw the killer. Warren Beatty plays a journalist who goes undercover to find out who killed the senator and a number of other witnesses to the crime. Pakula's directing is excellent with many memorable scenes. This was a different role for Beatty and he does well in a political thriller. The story is interesting and original with a thought provoking ending. This is a must have for any film collector.
Rating: 
Summary: In Need of Further Development
Review: The Parallax View has its points but suffers from a case of lack of proper plot development with too much being left for the viewer to figure out. Exactly why the senator is on the Parallax hit-list, for example, is never revealed. Neither is the make-up of Parallax. Exactly who is running this agency. The government? The military? Private interests? A combination of the above? It could have used some fine-tuning. If you are really into conspiracy theories, you will like this movie. Otherwise, I recommend All The President's Men.
Rating:
Summary: Intense, creepy thriller.
Review: The Parallax View is chilling. The DVD presentation is great visually, but the sound is quite variable throughout, meaning that when it's loud, it's really loud, and when it's soft, it's really soft. Constant running back and forth to the volume controls. Probably the worst sound on any DVD I own. However, the quality of the movie is such that I can overlook this problem. Makes me wary of Paramount's DVD releases, though. No supplements, no actor bios or anything like that, either.
Rating:
Summary: The paradigm for paranoia
Review: The Parallax View is the ultimate paranoia film, bar none. It is the standard by which all other films of this genre are judged. In other words, it is a classic. It combines stellar direction with a very believable performance by Warren Beatty to create a film that has no equal. From the opening on the Space Needle, it is obvious this movie isn't going to be run of the mill. From there, every plot line just gets bigger and bigger, until everything envelops Warren Beatty to form the film's stunning conclusion. Alan Pakula would eventually follow this film up with All The Presidents Men, that film is good, but this film is great. It stands as his masterwork, and it is the best of the 70's paranoia pictures.
Rating:
Summary: A Primer on Unsolved Assassinations
Review: This film is a blend of the unsolved assassinations of President JFK and Senator RFK. As fiction, it can tell the truth without getting bogged down by facts: the use of assassinations to control politics and society. It starts with the assassination of a Senator during his campaign, and tells the story of a reporter ("Joe Fraidy"!) who seeks the facts behind the deaths of the people who witnessed this assassination. It leads to a corporation that recruits suitable subjects for special tasks. The movie is mostly visual at times: it shows you scenes and lets you figure out what it means. You must watch it attentively! The end occurs in an auditorium, just like "The Manchurian Candidate". Can a "Manchurian Candidate" be created for political assassination? The very word "assassin" was derived from such a program! You can look up the documentation on the "MK ULTRA" program, and wonder what cam next. An unsolved assassination seems to be worthy of filming; see "Z", "The Day of the Jackal", or "Suddenly". A solved assassination may not be commercially viable (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley) because it is too real, horrible, and sad. To learn more about the unsolved assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, read Philip Melanson's 1991 book, which used newlt released LAPD and FBI files. You can also read a book on South American countries to see examples where assassinations and coups were used to control politics and society. B. Honnegger's "October Surprise" also lists the fate of the people who were involved in the secret 1980 meeting in Paris between Reagan partisans and Iranians.
Rating:
Summary: Shades of gray and JFK
Review: This film is one of my personal favourites so I had to have it when I saw it was available on DVD. For those of you who are put off by political thrillers and their plethora of names that you can't attach to faces, then don't be, this isn't what "The Parallax View" is all about. The message of this film isn't who done it and why, but simply that they CAN and WILL. Criticism of Warren Beatty's acting is a little harsh, he just plays Warren Beatty. That's because he's a film star first and an actor second (don't knock it, plenty of people have got away with it over the years). A fine supporting cast help make the implausible story believable and the sparse music score adds tension at just the right moments. Certainly the late director's best film in my opinion (I always find "All the Presidents Men" just a little too wordy). The anamorphic 2.35 to 1 picture on the DVD is excellent, but I would agree that the soundtrack varies between barely audible and ear shattering. No commentary or making of documentary but I still give this DVD 10 out of 10.
Rating: 
Summary: Awful - SO awful.
Review: This is one of the worst films I've ever seen. It starts out OK, like every other conspiracy thriller, it's just quite slow. Then, just as you're getting more and more bored, it starts veering into the completely incomprehensible. NOt because there is a complex plot, just because there doesn't seem to be ANY plot. Nothing happens. There are long periods of silence, and warren beatty looking generally foolish and doing nothing, speaking to no-one, getting on a bus, wandering about etc.
It all looks like one long drug trip. Or the bits from the cutting room floor of a thousand other films, not even pasted together to make a story.
Honestly, this is terrible. This film is so bad that my girlfriend (with whom I watched this film) has blanked it out of her mind completely and denies that she has ever seen it!
However good you think this looks - and I thought it looked quite promising too - it's dire. Don't waste your money on buying it, your time in watching it. Whoever you are, you are worth more than that.
Rating:
Summary: An unforgettable, deeply psychological thriller
Review: To start, this movie isn't aimed at the no-brainer-Friday-the-13th crowd. If you want mindless entertainment, you'd better look elsewhere. This is a movie that will make you THINK. To put it briefly, the movie is similar to a Robert Ludlom movie--nothing is what it seems, and there are conspiracies and double crosses at every bend. The most commonly mentioned sequence, i.e. the montage, will either strike you as boring or a tour-de-force, depending upon your psychological makeup. I've always felt its importance overrated. Rather, it's the convoluted plot that makes this movie worth repeated viewing. In fact, it's a movie that reveals more and more with each viewing--it wasn't until about the 3rd viewing that I realized that the whole thing was a major slap at the Warren Commission (for those that don't remember, the Warren Commission decided Oswald was JFK's lone killer). So sit right back, put on your thinking cap, and enjoy a masterpiece.
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