Never a Rifle When You Need One
The Parallax View (1974)
directed by Alan J. Pakula
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Not surprisingly, the future director of All the President’s Men knew a meal ticket when he saw it, but I take conspiracies for granted. Pakula doesn’t, or he wouldn’t act so surprised that Warren Beatty isn’t going to get out of this one alive. It’s tiresome to equate modern office buildings with faceless corporations and boring to be subjected to scene after scene of a man, all alone, framed against large concrete structures.
The problems begin halfway through, when the protagonist/journalist/detective enlists in a secret army of assassins and sits through five minutes of psychological tests that we, too, must endure. After A Clockwork Orange (released three years prior), subliminal indoctrination could only be funny (making Chuck the joke’s logical dead-end). But Pakula wants to play it straight and scary with all the blunt, dark cinematography Gordon Willis can cram into the lens. It’s too bad, too, as an earlier scene at the foot of a dam in rainy Washington State – a real-life, man-made set piece – is fun and menacing both. But politics and Illuminati offshoots require more serious attention, apparently, and I, for one, am much too cynical to play along.
Has any major movie star acted in a greater number of humorless movies than Warren Beatty?
directed by Alan J. Pakula
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Not surprisingly, the future director of All the President’s Men knew a meal ticket when he saw it, but I take conspiracies for granted. Pakula doesn’t, or he wouldn’t act so surprised that Warren Beatty isn’t going to get out of this one alive. It’s tiresome to equate modern office buildings with faceless corporations and boring to be subjected to scene after scene of a man, all alone, framed against large concrete structures.
The problems begin halfway through, when the protagonist/journalist/detective enlists in a secret army of assassins and sits through five minutes of psychological tests that we, too, must endure. After A Clockwork Orange (released three years prior), subliminal indoctrination could only be funny (making Chuck the joke’s logical dead-end). But Pakula wants to play it straight and scary with all the blunt, dark cinematography Gordon Willis can cram into the lens. It’s too bad, too, as an earlier scene at the foot of a dam in rainy Washington State – a real-life, man-made set piece – is fun and menacing both. But politics and Illuminati offshoots require more serious attention, apparently, and I, for one, am much too cynical to play along.
Has any major movie star acted in a greater number of humorless movies than Warren Beatty?
posted by NPK at 6:30 AM
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