Three Days of the Condor

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

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.

Great film -Robert Redford has a way of drawing in the audience and Faye Dunaway is more vulnerable than ever, her best role since Thomas Crown. No vulgarity in the love scene just a great sensuality. Both stars have shown an outstanding performance ! Top-notch screenplay - 70's films are definitely the best ones in terms of storytelling and screenplays. Sidney Pollack does also a great job as a director and delivers an efficient thriller that you can watch over and over again.I agree with some reviewers who think that it is one of the Redford's best. The supporting cast is also excellent. Maybe the directors nowadays should watch more often 70's films to be more inspired.

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

This is looking more and more like a period piece, dated and curious like one of those great Cold War films looks today (Failsafe or Seven Days in May). And yet it also feels like the beginnings of spy/counterspy films that are going on today, way beyond the pizazz of the early Bond films of the 1960s, and presaging the dozens since, including recent ones like the Bourne films or Syriana. It plays straight up as a suspense film, one where an almost innocent man is caught up in something huge and perplexing and awful, and we all identify with the individual against the powers of evil. Robert Redford plays the role of Joe Turner well, with the usual Redford stiffness, but believably--he reads books, after all--and sympathetically.

Putting yourself back to 1975 you have to remember that everyone was talking about, and reacting to, Watergate, and a U.S. president who had to resign from office because of it. Watergate, more than anything, started the current public roar (blossoming on the internet) about government conspiracy. Three Days of the Condor makes the government, and the CIA in particular, an almost unassailable and invisible force of spying and mistrust. Turner, by circumstance at first and then by admirable determination, fights back. He's clever as much as he is worried. He falls in love. He feels isolated but never gives up. He has close calls, and lucky escapes, and unlikely friends. He thinks of other people first.

In other words, he's a hero against the machine, and if the movie is sometimes slow, it creates a nice pace for the end, which is beautifully thought out. Director Sydney Pollack is hampered by a screenplay that alternates between awkward (Faye Dunaway's scenes) and brilliant (Redford's anti-spy character has a conversation with a hit man played by Max Von Sydow that shines), but he patches it together with an editing job that was nominated for an Oscar. And the cinematography by Owen Roizman is really nice (he shot a dozen great films from the French Connection to the Exorcist to Network). Condor is not just an entertainment, which is a saving grace, but it does also, slowly and beautifully, entertain.

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.