The Plot and Such: Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) is a prostitute. She lies, and she consorts with druggies, pimps, and businessmen cheating on their wives. Somebody is murdering Bree’s call-girl colleagues, and detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) wants to find out who.

I’m sure I watched Klute a long time ago, but when I recently watched it again, I found it much better than I remembered. I’m usually pretty unimpressed with Jane Fonda, but here she’s almost (almost) uniformly great, and she earned an Oscar for her work. This is one of the better Donald Sutherland performances I’ve seen, too. Credit, perhaps, should go to Alan J. Pakula for getting these performances and for creating this tension. I thought Fonda and Sutherland had real chemistry at points. The scene where they’re buying fruit (take a look below–as with anything, it’s even more effective in context) is great–good acting, good direction, good camera work. I found the film genuinely suspenseful, too; that aspect builds nicely. Thumbs up also for the score (again, in context) and for the brief appearance of Jean Stapleton. I anticipate watching this one again in the future.