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Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786300216495 Format: Color, NTSC ISBN: 6300216497 Label: Paramount Home Video Manufacturer: Paramount Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Paramount Home Video Release Date: August 26, 1992 Running Time: 102 minutes Sales Rank: 19350 Studio: Paramount Home Video Theatrical Release Date: June 14, 1974
Amazon.com essential video: Directed by Alan J. Pakula (All the President's Men, Sophie's Choice), this is an excellent, paranoid thriller and a benchmark for films of this type from the 1970s. Warren Beatty (Bonnie and Clyde) plays Joseph Frady, an arrogant investigative reporter who witnesses the assassination of a United States senator and then discovers that other reporters who were on the scene are dying under mysterious circumstances. With the help of his editor (Hume Cronyn), Frady goes underground to infiltrate the Parallax Corporation, which uses mind control to train assassins. And Frady might be the next one in line to take a fall. Featuring a classic brainwashing sequence and laced with intensity from start to finish, The Parallax View is essential viewing for fans of the political thriller genre. --Robert Lane
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Poor quality
The sound track was horrible - could barely hear the dialog while the special effects and music were extremely loud. A lot of the scenes were very dark. Did not hold up as well as I remember the original.
Rating: - "Extermination Incorporated"
A good retro movie to watch if you like conspiracy theories as a storyline. The Parallax Corporation is a fictional organization that trains assassins. Warren Beatty as Frady, (as in Fraidy-Cat, maybe?) seemingly paranoid journalistic investigator, gets on to their schemes, putting himself in grave danger and knowing he will not be believed by anyone. I really enjoyed this movie when I viewed it on the big screen in the Seventies. Warren is very, very good as is Hume Cronyn.
Rating: - A 35 years old film--still watchable, just not a classic
Parallax View is a 70s paranoia/conspiracy film. This movie is not in a class with Three Days of the Condor, but it stand up well against the test of time. (Even if the fashions don't.) The story and theme are a bit threadbare, but the acting and cinematography keep The Parallax View interesting.
My biggest problem is that the film sacrifices storytelling because it strives too hard to be art. (An artistic film does not need to be static or mind-numbingly slow.) Storytelling is especially important in a mystery or thriller--and at times, The Parallax view wants to be both. The story ... Read More
Rating: - Potential squandered by sloppy storytelling
This revered '70s paranoia thriller strikes me as a major disappointment. It starts out promisingly with an intriguing conspiracy plot, but director Alan J. Pakula is simply a lousy storyteller. His sense of pacing is terrible--scenes go on for far too long, often while we don't really understand what is happening in them, and then cut abruptly to something new. Parts of the film that are intended to be suspenseful register as dull and confusing. This does have its compensations; Pakula and the great DP Gordon Willis create some striking visual compositions, Warren Beatty does a nice job with his ... Read More
Rating: - Remains Topical
From the moment reporter Frady (Beatty) decides to investigate, he's caught in an anonymous web whose only face is that of the sinister Jack Younger (McGinn). How far does the web extend-- we can only guess. For Frady, it stretches from a tiny hamlet in the Pacific Northwest to a soaring glass monolith somewhere in urban America.
Probably no film captures the paranoid unease of the years between the JFK assassination and the Nixon resignation better than this one. Apprehension flowed like a dark undercurrent throughout the land. Something had happened in Dallas, Memphis, and LA's Ambassador ... Read More
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