The Parallax View: remember when Hollywood made potent political cinema?
This Warren Beatty thriller puts all the anxieties and tension of the 70s into a blender – and delivers a perfectly paranoid pulp mystery
TL;DR
- Hollywood cinema in 2026 rarely engages directly with the present "polycrisis," unlike the more confrontational films of the 1970s.
- "The Parallax View" (1974) is presented as a prime example of 70s political cinema, a paranoid thriller that critiques the US in the Nixon age.
- The film investigates a conspiracy involving a corporation recruiting political assassins and reflects anxieties about corruption, aggression, and malaise.
- Its imagery and visual language challenge the idealized "apple pie myth" of the US, highlighting domestic and foreign brutality.
- Contemporary Hollywood, dominated by big studios focused on reheated IP and blockbusters, produces little mid-budget cinema capable of such penetrating commentary.
- The article suggests a decline in Hollywood's ability to produce films that speak to the moment, partly due to industry trends and appeasement of current administrations.