Considered by many critics to be the artistic high point of director Francis Ford Coppola’s career, The Conversation conjures a dark atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion, a precursor to today’s surveillance society. In the film, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is an obsessive loner who is hired to record the conversation of a young couple (Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams) as they walk through San Francisco's Union Square. All of this is simple enough, until Caul begins to suspect that his employer (Harrison Ford) may have a darker ulterior motive. Tormented by memories of a previous case that ended badly, Caul becomes obsessed with the resulting tape, trying to determine if the couple are in danger.