I'll be honest: the "cheat" at the film's climax really ruins it for me. I know I shouldn't let a minor detail like that bother me, especially when the movie has so much else going for it, but I can't help it.

Yes, The Conversation is a classic. Yes, this film is brilliantly acted and Yes, it does have a very rewarding twist at the end. But No, it isn't very good.

Director, writer and producer Francis Ford Coppola stretches about half an hour of material ... (read more) Yes, The Conversation is a classic. Yes, this film is brilliantly acted and Yes, it does have a very rewarding twist at the end. But No, it isn't very good.

Director, writer and producer Francis Ford Coppola stretches about half an hour of material into 2 hours. Granted, the central plot is a brilliant one and the direction around the titled Conversation is a stroke of genius. But the only character of any interest is the lead, played by Gene Hackman, and everyone else in the movie (because there are a lot of others) just seem to be wasting our time. The movie is fundamentally dry. In fact, Coppola appears to have written the whole thing so that instead of creating interesting scenarios to progress the plot, mediocre or forced scenarios were used. It lacked imagination.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love gifts. But a gift wrapped in a long, soft, lifeless turd is NOT appealing. That is to say, as good and as interesting as this movie may be deep down, it's not packaged or presented well enough for me to recommend.

An exceptional thriller that remains relevant in our increasingly technocentric age, The Conversation's prescient examination of the subjectivity of representation has a wide impact, cleverly allegorising mass media proliferation, cemented by a power... (read more) An exceptional thriller that remains relevant in our increasingly technocentric age, The Conversation's prescient examination of the subjectivity of representation has a wide impact, cleverly allegorising mass media proliferation, cemented by a powerful twist ending. It is also superbly played by Gene Hackman as usual.

After seeing this listed on several friends' lists of "top films," I was shocked, upon finally viewing it, to find it an extremely unremarkable piece of filmmaking. Hackman is a fine actor, and Coppola's direction has its moments, but the real proble... (read more) After seeing this listed on several friends' lists of "top films," I was shocked, upon finally viewing it, to find it an extremely unremarkable piece of filmmaking. Hackman is a fine actor, and Coppola's direction has its moments, but the real problem is a sluggish story and a head-scratching lack of ideas. The concept of replaying the same conversation, with the tone changing as the audience learns more about the story, seems like a good recipe for some clever work with dialogue - unfortunately, it's a mere one line that changes meaning as the plot progresses. Most of the film is devoted to showing us exactly how uninteresting Caul's uninteresting life is, the end result being a certifiably uninteresting film.

Gene Hackman is excellent in this top notch thriller about paranoia, secrets and consequences.

A taut, intelligent thriller.

Part of the reason Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 The Conversation works so well is that it makes paranoia so poignant.