Three Days of the Condor

September 16, 2010 · Posted in Reviews Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller Sydney Pollack Cliff Robertson, Faye Dunaway, Max von Sydow, Robert Redford USA

Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?

Three Days of the Condor

This 1975 Robert Redford film is based on the CIA thriller “Six Days of the Condor” by James Grady. I guess their budget didn’t stretch to the other three days.

Directed by Sidney Pollack and also starring Faye Dunnaway as the love interest this is a nicely paced, complex, spy thriller.

In fact perhaps a bit top complex as I had trouble keeping up in a couple of places (that could have been the wine though), everybody seemed to be working both sides and it was tricky to remember who you could trust or who was a bad guy. This was obviously intentional on the director and screenwriters part.

The “basic” plot is Joe Turner (Robert Redford) is a low level CIA operative, a reader, who basically trawls through magazines and books from around the world to see if there are any hidden messages or plots similar to actual spy missions (this is before the Internet, these days he could probably have just set up a google alert and put his feet up).

One day he returns from lunch to find his office shot up and all his co-workers including his girlfriend murdered. Panicking he goes on the run and finds a phone to call CIA headquarters. This is where we learn that his codename is “Condor” and the film title starts to make sense.

He arranges to meet someone from HQ to help him out but it turns out his bosses are a shady bunch (well, they do work for the CIA) and may have been involved in the murders. A complicated plot ensues where it’s difficult to keep up with who’s on whose side, everyone seems to be double crossing or double agents or something.

As the plot resolves itself (from what I could understand of it), it turns out the reasons behind the attack at the beginning and the pursuit of Condor are very relevant today still, 35years later!

There were a couple of points I thought were weak or odd.

Obviously in a film like this there has to be a love interest, and here we have the marvellous Faye Dunnaway. Now I know that Robert Redford is a good looking charismatic guy but a few hours after being kidnapped by him she falls for him and they end up in bed, and depart later with a tearful, regretful smoke-filled train station farewell. Very cliche.

Also the villianous Max von Sydow character, the leader of the assassins at the beginning of the movie, has an odd character development towards the end, which thinking about it now doesn’t make much sense. Maybe it did at the time though.

Overall though a great spy, chase thriller that outclasses a lot of the loud, cgi, explosion filled “thrillers” we get today, which replace plot for noise.