For the bulk of the film, it’s a character study rather than a crime thriller, which continues to help with the hyper-realism and Bree's personal complexity.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 29, 2024

There's nail-biting suspense in spades, thanks to the atmospheric cinematography of Godfather cameraman Gordon Willis.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 8, 2024

In cinema, thankfully, there are no absolutes and no easy answers. Sure, there are generalities but a great film, especially with a transcendent performance, can take those rules and tear them into a million pieces.

| Feb 21, 2024

It’s a cliché, but they simply don’t make thrillers like this anymore: smart, sharp, adult.

| Aug 19, 2023

That it succeeds is mostly due to Fonda. Calling her performance powerhouse would be a grand understatement.

| Jun 27, 2021

The film is meticulously made, offering a swirl of tension -- aided in this by Michael Small's haunting score -- and Fonda is indeed fantastic, even if the role she's playing happens to be a Hollywood staple of outdated moors.

| Dec 11, 2020

Like other of Pakula's greatest films featuring phenomenal female leads, this is really a Jane Fonda picture you're watching, and it's impossible to forget it

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 11, 2020

Style, grit, and a narrative that pits focus on the unforgiving landscape of New York City.

| May 12, 2020

There is a timelessness to the freaky-ness and sadness of the human condition in this film, and Fonda is nothing short of sensational in her tense portrayal of a transitioning soul. An essential watch.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 9, 2020

As close to a classic as anything New Hollywood produced.

| Feb 18, 2020

Persuasive script by Andy and Dave Lewis; elegantly muted Technicolor; high in its class.

| Feb 12, 2020

What lifts it above its B-picture origins (and the pastiche is certainly conscious) is the style -- crisp, elliptical, only moderately arty -- of Alan J. Pakula's direction.

| Feb 12, 2020

This is done with remarkably little dialogue but with a tremendous sense of tension and atmosphere.

| Feb 12, 2020

But Klute feels vibrantly alive in a way that betrays its subdued chilliness.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 9, 2020

While the plot mechanics work along the well-worn gears of any number of mystery-thrillers, the film catches and holds us because Bree is such a fascinating, enigmatic character.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 26, 2019

Klute is a cool film about a cool customer, but it's all a façade... [I]t's more of a character study in thriller garb, and Bree's cool affect is mostly a well-honed act.

| Aug 26, 2019

There was no shortage of superb performances by lead actresses in the 1970s -- Diane Keaton in Annie Hall and Sally Field in Norma Rae are two that immediately come to mind -- but Jane Fonda's turn in Klute was not only great but also groundbreaking.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 27, 2019

A movie resolutely of its moment that still surges with third-rail electricity ...

| Nov 24, 2015

Playing a complex, sharpy written part, Jane Fonda won the Best Actress Oscar for her strongest dramatic performance in Alan Pakula's well mounted drmataic thriller

| Original Score: A- | Jan 3, 2011

Produced handsomely in New York, but directed tediously by Alan J. Pakula, the film is a suspenser without much suspense.

| Jul 7, 2010