The Parallax View

The Parallax View is the American thriller that best captures the paranoid atmosphere that emerged after the shocking assassinations in the 1960s of a number of political leaders (John F. and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X) and pushes the conspiracy theories that counter the lone gunmen's fairy tales to their most extreme conclusion. Journalist Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) investigates a series of strange deaths of witnesses to the assassination of a potential presidential candidate at the Space Needle in Seattle. In his search for the perpetrators, Frady stumbles upon the Parallax Corporation, a shadowy organisation involved in recruiting, enlisting and training political assassins. Alan J. Pakula, in the strongest part of his paranoia trilogy (the others being Klute and All the President's Men), finds strong visual metaphors to depict his distrust in the US open government system.