The 70s saw a rash of films that dealt heavily with paranoia, something that probably fit in well with the times post-Watergate. Robert Redford was known for enough of them for Marvel to cast him in their own homage to those sorts of films with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Personally, I think the closest I came to seeing one myself was The French Connection, and that one only because of the ending where the major criminals all escape without so much as a parking ticket. So, with that in mind, once again I find myself looking to fill in my gaps.
Hence Three Days of the Condor, streaming on HBO Max until the end of the month, and I figured now was as good a time as any. I’m actually glad I did.
Joe Turner (Redford) is a CIA analyst working out of a small New York office with a handful of other analysts. His job is to read foreign pulp novels and look for possible connections to actual CIA activity. He doesn’t really know anything. He also doesn’t follow some basic procedures, and that is what keeps him alive. During a lunch run, Joe slips out a back door and, as a result, is not in the office when international killer-for-hire Joubert (Max von Sydow) shows up with a team of associates and wipes everyone out. Joe, scared out of his mind when he gets back, calls the home office to report it. However, since he doesn’t know who did the killings or why, Joe isn’t sure he can trust his superiors either. As events transpire, it turns out he has good reason not to.
In fact, Joe’s only real ally is one Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway), a woman Joe spots by chance in a store after escaping an attempt on his life. His only weapon is a single handgun he took from a co-worker’s desk, and he doesn’t even really have any sort of fighting skills. He mostly just reads a lot, and he’s smart. That may be enough if he wants to stay ahead of the entire American intelligence apparatus while being an amateur when it comes to survival.
I really liked this. Redford is a handsome, charismatic man, but this may be the closest he ever came to playing a dork. He really is more bookish and smart than anything else, but since he has no training, he has to make it up as he goes along, all while looking out for the handful of people in his life who he actually cares about. Dunaway seems to be something of a staple in the movies of the 70s I end up really liking, but then there’s von Sydow as the consummate professional hitman. He believes in predictability, and that is what makes Joe, codenamed Condor, so hard to find: he’s anything but predictable since he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing.
Director Sydney Pollack kept the tension tight throughout, particularly in an elevator confrontation where Joe, Joubert, and the audience all more or less know what’s going but none of them can say it directly. Joe’s various escape plans are very clever, relying on quick witted thinking more than anything else, and Joe’s one big fight scene between himself and an assassin dressed like a mailman showed some great fight choreography. Sure, Kathy might have been won over a little too easily in the grand scheme of things, but the fact Joe doesn’t end up with the girl, so to speak, was a nice touch I wish more movies did. It’s movies like this that display a craftsmanship that’s missing from a lot of more recent films and demonstrates, quite ably, why Redford is as big a star as he is.
Grade: A
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