Klute (1971)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Too much of everything

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

A fine mystery movie it is. "Klute" is a movie to be reckoned with. John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is a detective looking for a friend who disappeared without a trace. He would travel to New York where he meets a high-end call girl named Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda). She deals with every sorts of clientele. When she and Klute gets together, she gets a weird feeling that she can't understand. This prostitute has been a lot: Jaded, stalked,beaten up, questioned by police, etc. Being in the world she knows well, Daniels is put in an upside-down world. I remember the part where Klute questions her, she unzipped her dress and he asked, "Do you mind not doing that?" That night, when Bree couldn't sleep, she goes by Klute's place and sleep over. The movie has a lot of twists and turns to it. Plenty of star power, a lot of raw energy as well. It's a mystery for adults. And there are lots of surprises to come with. It is a gem for mature audiences. 4.5 out of 5 stars

A small-town detective (Donald Sutherland) searching for a missing man has only one lead: a connection with a New York prostitute (Jane Fonda).Jane Fonda won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film. And she is alright, and still receives such great praise. But come on... Donald Sutherland! That guy turns everything he touches into gold. Perhaps one of the most under-rated performers of the 20th 9and 21st) century.This is a great detective story with twists and turns. Alan Pakula is not a name that many people know, and I have to wonder why. He consistently made great films. Yet, you rarely hear anyone sing the praises of "Klute" or "The Parallax View". Shame on you, movie lovers!

So I'm pondering the resolution to the murder mystery here and it leads me to the sixty four thousand dollar question - what the heck was Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi) thinking? Unless I'm missing something here, Cable hired private detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) to essentially find himself, who admitted near the finale to Bree (Jane Fonda) that he killed three people. Why not just give himself up instead of making a cat and mouse game out of it? I guess he wanted to jump out of that window.Oh well. I recall this film coming out with some fanfare back in 1971 because of it's subject matter. Fonda and Sutherland were breaking out as legitimate stars and the culture was beginning it's nosedive with movie treatments about free love, prostitution, drugs and you name it. It was epitomized here when Bree defends her lifestyle in a taped conversation with Tom Gruneman - "There's nothing wrong, nothing. Nothing is wrong." This all led to 'let it all hang out' and from there society continues in free fall to this day.In it's day the picture was pretty daring but it would hardly register a ripple today, which is when I saw it for the first time. I'll admit grudgingly that Fonda's performance was pretty good; as for Sutherland, I'll have to blame the director for his lifeless portrayal here as the title character. One could make an argument that this is one of those early Seventies films that are must see, but once it got under way I thought there would be more of a mystery to the story.

Jane Fonda as the call-girl/wannabe actress Bree Daniels, with a superb hair-do and a (mostly) take-no-s*** personality is the reason to see Pakula's Klute, despite being named after the male main character. It's such a performance - and a character - that is risible and powerful in its confidence, dynamic, occasionally frightened, occasionally VERY sexy, volatile, and gives a lot in those psychology sessions that are basically to the camera/us. She looks like she's constantly THINKING even as she is reacting with a cutting remark or a cut-the-BS moment. And when she makes that talk-seduction of the old man, it's one of the most memorable moments in any 70's film.Sutherland is very good as well, though he has the trickier role as he has to downplay everything as the straightforward cop. The final monologue is gripping and intense from the villain, and yet it's one of those handful of villain monologues that really not just hold up over time, but show up so many others in its wake. It's terrifying in how simple the actor speaks the words and Fonda listens. Klute isn't all great, but it's all of a cool, rocking-but-eerily-jazzy 70's period piece too (think of it, in a way, as the East-Coast sister to Dirty Harry).I wish the plot were just a little stronger, but as a film that relies on its characters it fares quite well. Luckily, Gordon Willis - on the film that likely got the ball really rolling with his nickname "The Prince of Darkness" - is there to make things look unique in the noir-frame of the style. It's so dark you might be left in the dark... until you're not.And Roy Scheider is here, intermittently only (sadly) as a pimp. Chief Brody as a pimp. Need I say more?