At the time of its release, The Parallax View received mixed reactions from critics, but the film's reception has been more positive in recent years. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 86% based on 44 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critics consensus says, "The Parallax View blends deft direction from Alan J. Pakula and a charismatic Warren Beatty performance to create a paranoid political thriller that stands with the genre's best."[6] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[7]
Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars upon its release. While Beatty offered a good performance in an effective if predictable thriller, Ebert said the actor was not called upon to exercise his full talents. Ebert also noted similarities to the 1973 film Executive Action, but said Parallax was "a better use of similar material, however, because it tries to entertain instead of staying behind to argue."[8] In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "Neither Mr. Pakula nor his screenwriters, David Giler and Lorenzo Semple, Jr., display the wit that Alfred Hitchcock might have used to give the tale importance transcending immediate plausibility. The moviemakers have, instead, treated their central idea so soberly that they sabotage credulity."[9] Joseph Kanon of The Atlantic found the film's subject pertinent: "what gives the movie its real force is the way its menace keeps absorbing material from contemporary life."[10]
Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "We would probably be better off rethinking—or better yet, not thinking about—the whole dismal business, if only to put an end to ugly and dramatically unsatisfying products like The Parallax View."[11]
In 2006, Entertainment Weekly critic Chris Nashawaty wrote, "The Parallax View is a mother of a thriller... and Beatty, always an underrated actor thanks (or no thanks) to his off-screen rep as a Hollywood lothario, gives a hell of a performance in a career that's been full of them."[12]
Alexander Kaplan at Film Score Monthly wrote, "Beatty brought his relaxed, low-key charm[,] making his character’s fate even more shocking, while the supporting cast provided ... memorable performances, including Paula Prentiss’s heartbreakingly terrified reporter[.] ... Pakula observed that Frady 'imagines the most bizarre kind of plots, (but) is destroyed by a truth worse than anything he could have imagined.' The film’s ending ... suggests that Parallax may have been onto Frady the whole time, another subversion of his heroic status. Even the hero’s name is unheroic, 'Joe Frady' suggesting a mocking mixture of Dragnet’s Joe Friday and the schoolyard taunt [']fraidy cat.'"[13]
The motion picture won the Critics Award at the Avoriaz Film Festival (France) and was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture. Gordon Willis won the Award for Best Cinematography from the National Society of Film Critics (USA).
Reviewing films depicting political assassination conspiracies for The Guardian, director Alex Cox called the film the "best JFK conspiracy movie".[14] Film critic Matt Zoller Seitz has called it "a damn near perfect movie".[15]
