- Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) thinks somebody is following her, and she's right - they are. In fact, there's practically a parade of people lined up to see Bree because she's working as a call girl in New York during its early 1970s era of "peak seediness." Naturally, Bree aspires to convert her off-off-Broadway experience into an acting career, but (equally naturally) making fifty bucks an hour in her new line of work is easier than enduring a gauntlet of frustrating auditions. Plus, as Bree tells her psychiatrist, being a call girl makes her feel like she's in control of her life for a few hours each day.
- But about those people following her. One of them is a private detective named John Klute (Donald Sutherland), who is investigating the death of his missing friend Tom Gruneman (Robert Milli). Gruneman left behind a crude letter addressed to Bree, so his former business partner Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi) hired Klute to look for Tom. By the time Klute gets to Bree, however, the cops have already convinced her to be plenty uncooperative. Although Klute's awkward aloofness doesn't make inroads with Bree, his genuine interest in her safety gradually wins her over. Oh, and Tom's killer is also following them both. The film sensibly reveals the killer's identity about halfway through so that the audience can spend the rest of its runtime worrying about him.
- Although the plot of Klute is standard "psycho killer" movie fare, the film is helped tremendously by director Alan J. Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis, who would go on to collaborate on the even more brilliant films The Parallax View and All the President's Men. In this film, Pakula does a great job forcing the audience to view Bree from a distance just like her murderous voyeur, and the lighting and direction in Klute's exploration of the apartment roof is the stuff of nightmares. The disorienting audio recordings add to the overall creepiness and prefigure The Conversation by a few years. Sutherland is reliable as always and there are some good supporting roles (Roy Scheider, Dorothy Tristan, Morris Strassberg), but Fonda's tremendous performance steals the show. Although Klute is the first entry in what is sometimes called Pakula's "paranoia trilogy," it's not paranoia when they really are out to get you.
- Apparently Sly Stallone is the shirtless club dancer, but I was more surprised to see Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton) pop up as a secretary.
