Three Days of the Condor

I'm sure that Robert Redford thought he had the greatest job in the world in Three Days Of The Condor. He's a reader for the Central Intelligence Agency. His job along with several other associates is to read various books, fiction and non-fiction, in a comfortable old Upper East Side of New York brownstone and glean ideas for the agency.

Except that one fine day an innocuous report gets turned in from his brownstone that panics someone in a high place. A hit team is sent out and Redford by dint of going out for lunch orders through a back entrance misses a massacre. After he calls it in and then escapes another murder attempt in which a friend in the agency is killed, he doesn't know who to trust.

Three Days Of The Condor is a finely tuned spy thriller which will keep you guessing right up to the end. You will be inside Robert Redford's head totally, you won't know what to believe either. Eventually the only one he does trust is a woman whom he forces at gunpoint to help him escape. The woman is Faye Dunaway who goes Stockholm and enlists in helping Redford try and sort things out.

Redford proves to be quite resourceful even winning the admiration of Max Von Sydow, the contract killer hired to get him. After all he's not a field agent, but as Von Sydow points out, 'he does read'.

Sydney Pollack kept things going at a Hitchcock like level of tension with great performances from his cast. That would also include Cliff Robertson as the CIA station chief whose motives are mixed to say the least.

If your taste tends to espionage thrillers, don't miss Three Days Of The Condor.

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

I look back at films like "Three Days of Condor" with a nice twinkle in the eyes due to the fact that Hollywood and even world cinema don't make films like this anymore. Where's the excitement in seeing an ordinary guy fighting against the odds facing powerful and dangerous people behind him without being a James Bond or a Jason Bourne type? Where did the intelligent and high standard plots go? And who said that a suspense film must have a haunting score or fast action scenes? Sydney Pollack made a wonderful thriller, with delightful dramatic scenes and an interesting plot that new directors of our recent times would be ashamed of what they're doing with plenty of money but no good script in hands.

And you gotta love when Robert Redford plays someone related to spies and intelligence services, after all he gave us notable and memorable performances not only in this but also in "Sneakers" and "Spy Game", outstanding spy thrillers. Here, he plays a bookish CIA researcher named Joseph Turner, codename 'The Condor', involved in a mysterious and dangerous incident after the murder of all his colleagues. The strange fact is that they only deliver messages to the headquarters, under secret memos, nothing harmful but for some reason the only member of this team who survived is followed by a sinister man (the great Max von Sydow), and also by some of his bosses at CIA (one of them played by Cliff Robertson). Trying to figure out what happened and who is trying to kill him, Turner takes a hostage (Faye Dunaway) that might help him out and also might be a next victim of these people.

Intelligent without being complicated or fuzzy, breathtaking without making the audience feel dizzy with some innovating shaky camera, "Three Days of Condor" might look dated or not much demanding in terms of surprise, but it certainly it's a serious and thrilling experience, with lots of action and effective and well balanced dramatic moments between Dunaway and Redford, and it has many things that lack in today's movies: it makes us feel good and it makes us really scared for the sake of these characters, we can relate to them and to their dangerous moments fighting the bad guys.

The performances are brilliant most notably the villain played by Max von Sydow, working with an efficiency in such a sinister and dark character that gets our attention from the first moment he's on the screen to the very last (and surprising!) scene. My favorite part with him was when he explained why he does what he does, explaining in very reasonable terms for his line of work as sort of a high class mercenary.

Sydney Pollack makes of "Three Days of Condor" a rare great thriller that still can make our hearts beat fast, with enormous qualities in terms of acting, screenplay, direction, cinematography, editing and music, and he only would made a similar interesting work in the also thrilling "The Firm". No wonder that David Rayfiel wrote both films and they were both amazing. We need more of those now! 10/10

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.