88
Metascore
17 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertAs he is played by Gene Hackman in The Conversation, an expert wiretapper named Harry Caul is one of the most affecting and tragic characters in the movies.
- 100EmpireAngie ErrigoEmpireAngie ErrigoAnother great, landmark American film of the '70s.
- 100TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineOne of Coppola's very best.
- 100Time OutTime OutA bleak and devastatingly brilliant film.
- 90VarietyVarietyA major artistic asset to the film - besides script, direction and the top performances - is supervising editor Walter Murch's sound collage and re-recording.
- 90The GuardianThe GuardianThe Conversation is an immaculate thriller, a study in paranoia and loneliness, long in gestation, partly inspired by Antonioni's Blow-Up, and released as the Watergate scandal was unfolding.
- 80Chicago ReaderChicago ReaderGene Hackman excels in Francis Ford Coppola's tasteful, incisive 1974 study of the awakening of conscience in an electronic surveillance technician.
- 70The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyMr. Coppola, the writer as well as the director, has nearly succeeded in making a great film but has, instead, made one that is merely very good.
- 70The New YorkerMichael SragowThe New YorkerMichael SragowThanks to Walter Murch’s keen, intuitive sound montage and Hackman’s clammy, subtle performance, the movie captures a more elusive and universal fear—that of losing the power to respond, emotionally and morally, to the evidence of one’s own senses.