Los tres días del cóndor

Saw this movie in theaters way back when (yes I am old). It was so long ago that I had forgotten most of the movie. Thoroughly enjoyed watching it again during the virus lockdown. As much fun for first time viewers of today as it is for old timers like me.

Sidney Pollack is a great admirer of Alfred Hitchcock, which he also proved with "The Interpreter". Apparently he loves suspenseful thrillers and I sure hope for him that his movies will age as well as those that Hitchcock made. And I guess they do. Even though it was made thirty years ago, "Three Days of the Condor" still hasn't lost any of its power. Sure, you could call it a typical product of the seventies, but even today this movie feels up-to-date and believable.

Turner works for the American Literary Historical Society, or at least so it seems. In reality he is a CIA researcher, with the code name Condor, who gets paid to read books, in which he has to find possible scenarios that could be used in intelligence work. When he returns to his office after he went out to get lunch, he finds all his colleagues dead and he doesn't know who shot them. He immediately calls a superior who sends his section chief to get him out of there. But when the man arrives, he immediately opens fire on Turner. In an act of pure desperation - he no longer knows who he can trust - Turner kidnaps a woman he has never seen before and forces her to hide him. He will stay in her house until he can find out what exactly is going on. But even there he isn't save. He is discovered and attacked in the woman's house, but is able to kill the man. Now he knows one thing for sure: the man too had a connection to the CIA, which means that someone in the CIA must be behind all this...

I guess the best thing about this movie is the fact that it doesn't give away all its information at once. At first Turner appears to be an ordinary guy who arrives late for work. Nothing special there. But because he gradually builds up tension by slightly releasing more information, the writer knows how to keep you focused and interested. I guess the best way to describe this movie is calling it a classic spy thriller without James Bond-like locations or bad guys and and no super hero who can beat all the bad guys with a blink of an eye. No, this is a normal man who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and who now has to face an unusual and life threatening situation. I guess that's where this movie gets its strength: you can easily identify with him, even though he is a spy.

And yes, the whole concept of the movie is very seventies: the paranoia towards the government, the insecurity of not knowing who your enemies or your friends are... all give it that typical feeling. but even today this movie hasn't lost any of its power or relevance. All in all this is a very good and stylish thriller that offers plenty of tension and some very nice acting. Especially Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway were very nice to watch, but the other actors did a fine job too. Thanks to the combination of the acting, a good story and some nice camera-work, Pollack has created a movie Hitchcock might have been proud of if he had done it. That's why I give this movie a 7.5/10.

This film was very effective in maintaining the tension not only of the Condor's life and death mission to discover the reasons for the massacre of his colleagues but also the relationship between him and Kathy. The cast is uniformly good though Redford obviously carries the film. Von Sydow is again great as the strictly professional assassin. The entire film had an aura of authenticity that had me entirely engrossed. Recommended, 8/10.

Though this movie is 45 years old, the movie still holds up today and just shows that our governments are still fighting over the same things that they were in the mid-70s. Timeless. Beautiful transfer. Brilliant thriller and very fast paced. Catch it on Amazon Prime streaming

Towards the end of this film - two of the main protagonists engage in a conversation that is so telling - it could have been written yesterday and not thirty years ago.

The West has long looked to the east and its oil fields as potential targets and this film just reinforces the fact that what we think of as a new war has in fact been a raging cold war for decades. It is not and never has been about freedom –it is now and always has been a war of economic necessity. Although this film is not as renowned as many of the other paranoid spy thrillers of the 70's such as the Conversation or the Parallax View it is still a very watchable and intriguing film.

Redford is well cast as a fish out of water having to adapt his talents from the page to real life. The central relationship between Dunaway and Redford doesn't work as well as it should. She is too keen to fall for his charms and were it not Redford but a more charmless man like Hackman for example I doubt it would have worked at all.

The film is not as complex as has suggested. It is neat and easy enough to follow. It has a beguiling character that is better for my money than harder hitting films like Parallax. Redfords fight in the middle of the film is copied in a many ways by the new Bourne movie fight scenes. Indeed the double talk spy will appeal to fans of this genre. Bourne today is the nearest thing to Condor in the movies.

And Von Sydow is as always untouchable. Worth a remake but I still have a very dear place in my big movie heart for well made 70s films like this.