Parallax View [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Based on a novel by Loren Singer, The Parallax View could well have been titled The Parallel View, inasmuch as the events in the film are obviously intended to parallel the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Warren Beatty plays a Seattle TV reporter who is approached by a terrified Paula Prentiss. She had been an eyewitness to a political assassination several years earlier; since that time, all the other witnesses have died mysteriously. Though the story is not considered "hot" by editor Hume Cronyn--the so-called "lone assassin" was himself killed by the police, and the case was closed--Beatty insists upon investigating. The key to the mystery is the monolithic Parallax Corporation. As Beatty snoops about, several attempts are made on his on his life. It turns out that there was more than one gunman at that long-ago political assassination, and that Parallax had a vested interest in the elimination of the victim. When Beatty is on the verge of uncovering the truth, he becomes as much a dupe as that unfortunate "lone" assassin. After this shakedown course in fictional political paranoia, director Alan J. Pakula was ready for the real-life conspiracies re-enacted in his 1976 film All the President's Men.