R | 1h 57m | Drama, Mystery, Thriller | 1975
Director Sydney Pollack’s “Three Days of the Condor” (“Condor”) was the fourth and final mystery thriller distributed by Paramount over the span of 17 months. Preceding it was “Chinatown” (1974), “The Parallax View” (1974), and “The Conversation” (1974).
The fourth of six collaborations from Pollack and Robert Redford, “Condor” was their first joint project in the spy genre. On the 50th anniversary of its release in 1975, the film exposes espionage that could still be happening in our country today. Often mistaken for politics, espionage can be political, but must contain at least two covert feuding entities or spies.
Although Joe Turner (Redford) technically works for the C.I.A., he’s not a gun-toting field agent, but does have a neat code name: Condor. Turner and seven others work at the American Literary Historical Society, a Manhattan front company that examines all forms of printed literature to determine if there are any connections to the C.I.A. while also coming up with new agency mission suggestions.
While Turner is literally out to lunch one day, three gunmen, led by Joubert (Max von Sydow), assassinate six of his co-workers. When Turner discovers this, he quickly contacts headquarters and is told to calm himself and call back in two hours.
Brace for Impact
Sufficiently chilled, Turner makes the second call and speaks to Higgins (Cliff Robertson), an agency higher-up who gives him instructions to meet with his supervisor, a man he’s never met. This is when Turner’s observational skills kick into overdrive. Sensing Higgins is lying to him, Turner braces for an ambush at the meeting place which, as he guessed, goes terribly wrong.
Realizing he has no allies and is likely living on borrowed time, Turner abducts Kathy (Faye Dunaway), an unsuspecting bystander buying ski gear who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. At gunpoint, Turner forces Kathy into her car and orders her to drive home. Visibly shaken but never losing her cool, Kathy complies. This, in turn, gets Turner to relax a bit while he figures out what to do next.
At this point, you might feel you’ve been made privy to too much plot detail, but trust me, you haven’t. Kathy’s entrance is at about the 30-minute mark of the nearly two-hour movie and what plot I’ve revealed is only about 10 percent of the entire story.
The screenplay by David Rayfiel and Lorenzo Semple Jr. is very loosely based on the 1974 James Grady novel “Six Days of the Condor.” Character names and entire events are changed, eliminated, or added, and the movie is all the better for it.
Great Balance
A superb visual storyteller, Pollack knows when to hit the narrative gas and when to tap the brake, which allows the story the time needed to rest and breathe. Unlike the somewhat similarly-themed Paramount-distributed “Marathon Man” from 1976, which rarely let up, “Condor” deftly balances action with dialogue-driven exposition.
The filmmakers take their collective time with the details. The “who, what, when, and where” are slowly doled out in dribs and drabs during the second and third acts. Not until the final 15 minutes is the big “why” revealed. This eerily prophesizes a (perhaps planned) late ’70s “crisis” that would put a stranglehold on the world energy supply.
My only gripe with the story is the force-fit romantic subplot involving Turner and Kathy. Suggesting something akin to a steamy Stockholm syndrome situation, the characters go from enemies to bedmates on the turn of a dime.
In the space of just one scene, Kathy goes from being Turner’s captive prisoner to his willing lover. This is not part of the novel’s plot, and my guess, if I know anything about movie marketing, is that part of the green-lighting process of this movie was that Redford and Dunaway’s characters would be “sleeping” together. One gander at the movie poster (see below) adds weight to this theory.
Relevant Today
Despite this avoidable blip, “Condor” still manages to deliver major thrills and surprises and proves you don’t need chase scenes and excessive bloodletting in order to make a nail-biting suspense thriller.
“Condor” is about a single three-letter agency manipulating energy futures a half-century ago with now dated surveillance abilities and stone-age computer technology. With AI currently in unchecked overdrive mode and paranoia run amuck, and the old three-letter outfits (CIA, FBI, DOD, CID) competing with newer ones (DEA, NSA, DOE, DHS), what went down in “Condor” is child’s play by comparison.
While “Condor” is not quite “1984” the underlying message is the same. The more power the government gets, the more it wants, and as time marches forward, the less we notice.
The film is available on home video and available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Kanopy.
‘Three Days of the Condor’
Director: Sydney Pollack
Starring: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow
Running Time: 1 hour, 57 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Release Date: Sept. 25, 1975
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
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