"Klute" was a mixture of lone cop and private eye: a police officer who was hired privately to investigate somebody's disappearance
The trail led him deep into the world of New York call-girls, pimps and drug addicts
It was all shown, the vice, the degradation, but with intelligent compassion and honest humanity instead of the leer that so often sits on the face of the Seventies
Although barely more talkative than "Dirty Harry," "Klute" emerged as a whole human being rather than as a robot programmed to shoot and hit
And as a high class hooker Bree Daniel, Jane Fonda achieved a characterization that has never been surpassed in all the abundant literature of tarts with hearts
"Klute" was a modern, as honest and unflinching as any fanatic for realism could ask; yet it was never curious about sexuality, never needlessly violent, never brutal
And for complete, entertaining suspense, it was up there with the great ones: an enormous tribute to the producer-director Alan J. Pakula
