Eavesdropping has it's downsides

The Conversation (1974)

Francis Ford Coppola fresh out of the phenomenal success of The Godfather (1972) made this brilliant little thriller based in the world of espionage. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a very private person who loves nothing more than to be by himself, but in contrast he spies on the lives of other people as he runs a private company specialized in electronic surveillance. He has been hired to record the conversation of a young couple and at first it seems like just another job, but things don't seem quite right. Soon he discovers that the couple might be in danger and he's facing a dilemma of wether to return the tapes of the conversation to the man who hired him or to just destroy them and possibly save two lives. I must say I really like this movie. It's quite ingenious at parts and the subtle development of the storyline towards a truly suspenseful thriller is something even Hitchcock would have been proud of. The cast is just brilliant, Gene Hackman doing one of his best performances and the rest aren't much worse. The last 30 minutes of this movie are probably the best thriller from the 70's, it's simply a work of art. The cinematography was quite nice also, though nothing exceptional but there were some shots that looked stunning. Definitely among the best from Coppola and even among the better thrillers ever made.
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