Delayed Reaction: The Parallax View

Premise: A reporter stumbles onto a conspiracy in which a company assassinates politicians.

 

You can only hear "Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a Marvel movie, but it's also a 70s hard-boiled thriller like The Parallax View" so many times before you have to actually see The Parallax View. It really is incredible how many times I've heard people describe The Winter Soldier in almost those exact words. It's like Marvel handed out a flier that everyone memorized. In fact, I've conflated the two movies so much that I felt betrayed when I realized this movie starred Warren Beatty rather than Robert Redford, who was featured in The Winter Soldier.

 

This movie requires one huge buy-in, and if you can accept that, it's hard to find a flaw in the movie. It needs you to believe that there's an all-powerful corporation, with presumably dozens or hundreds of employees, maintaining the secret of a series of high-profile assassinations. That's a huge ask for me. I don't buy into large conspiracies. I think it's hard enough for one person to keep a secret. Expecting a network of people to do it is unfathomable. I've also seen too much of corporate bureaucracy to believe that even the best and brightest can execute at the highest level with nary a slip up. You could certainly make the argument that I think this because I've only ever heard of the conspiracies that fell apart. The conspiracies that confirm the possibility of something like the Parallax Corporation, by design, will never be heard of. That's like telling me to believe in God because I can't prove there isn't one though.

 

So, The Parallax View is a movie that, even when I'm enjoying it on a thrills level, my mind is actively refuting the story ("How did they arrange that?", "What happens if that assassin gets caught?", "Why are these secret papers just lying around?"). Since I don't know how to turn that part of my brain off, my enjoyment of this movie is capped.

 

As I said though, the rest is pretty much perfect. This is peak Hollywood Star Warren Beatty. I'm always a sucker for a reporter on a mission stories. I love the cinematography. They frame a lot of the shots differently than I'm used to. A lot of wide shots, like I'm more of a spectator than a participant. I love how loud the movie gets at times: at the dam and when the band is playing at the end in particular. Filmmakers sometimes forget how unnerving noise can be. This is a movie I liked just enough that I imagine I'll revisit it again someday to see if I like it more when I meet it at its level.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend