Klute | The

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A small-town detective searching for a missing man has only one lead: a connection with a New York prostitute.

Six months after the disappearance of Tuscarora, PA businessman Tom Gruneman, his boss, Peter Cable, and his wife, Holly Gruneman, hire Tom's friend, private detective John Klute to find out what happened to Tom, as the police have been unable to do so, and despite John having no expertise in missing persons cases.

Klute is the first installment of what has informally come to be known as Pakula's “paranoia trilogy”. The other two films are The Parallax View (1974) and All the President's Men (1976). The film was theatrically released on June 25, 1971 by Warner Bros, grossing $12 million against a $2.5 million budget. Reviewers praised the film's direction, screenplay and most notably Fonda's performance. It received two nominations at the 44th Academy Awards; Best Original Screenplay, with Fonda winning Best Actress.

On Rotten Tomatoes, Klute holds an approval rating of 93% based on 40 reviews, with an average rating of 8.19/10. The website's critical consensus reads: “Donald Sutherland is coolly commanding and Jane Fonda a force of nature in Klute, a cuttingly intelligent thriller that generates its most agonizing tension from its stars' repartee.” On Metacritic, which assigns a rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating “universal acclaim”