{"id":10558,"date":"2025-01-14T16:56:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T21:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=10558"},"modified":"2025-01-14T16:57:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T21:57:13","slug":"three-days-of-the-condor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/01\/14\/three-days-of-the-condor\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Days of the Condor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Three Days of the Condor<\/strong> (1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 118 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, a scene of sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sydney Pollack\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dave Grusin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Owen Roizman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 25, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow, John Houseman, Addison Powell, Walter McGinn, Tina Chen, Michael Kane, Don McHenry, Michael Miller, Jess Osuna, Dino Narizzano, Helen Stenborg, Patrick Gorman, Hansford Rowe, Carlin Glynn, Hank Garrett, James Keane.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $41.5M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the wake of Watergate, Hollywood started churning out paranoid thrillers in which a lone person stumbles across a conspiracy typically involving powerful people able to cover up their misdeeds. Upon discovery, said person spends the rest of the film looking over his shoulder and dodging attempts on his life. Examples of the genre include Executive Action, The Conversation, The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t see Three Days of the Condor<\/strong> until summer 1986. An acquaintance from high school turned me on to this fascinating spy thriller about a CIA analyst fighting to stay alive after he uncovers a sinister plot involving higher-ups in the agency. Joe Turner, code name \u201cCondor\u201d (Redford, The Sting) isn\u2019t a field agent. He just reads books. He and his colleagues read everything (books, magazines and newspapers) to see if any details match actual CIA operations. They\u2019re also looking for new ideas on how to operate. They work out of a clandestine office in New York City, the American Literary Historical Society. Nobody is supposed to know about it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One day while Joe is out picking up lunch for everybody, a couple of armed men show up and kill everybody. Everybody except Joe, that is. He comes back to find all of his co-workers dead. He grabs a gun and leaves. He then contacts CIA headquarters from a pay phone. They arrange to pick Joe up and bring him to safety. It\u2019s a trap, of course. When Joe shows up at the designated meeting place, they try to kill him. He gets away, but now he doesn\u2019t know who to trust. That\u2019s in addition to not knowing why they want him dead. He spends the rest of the movie trying to figure it out while also keeping one eye out for potential threats to his life.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In need of a place to hide while he assesses his situation, Joe forces a woman at gunpoint to take him to her place. Kathy (Dunaway, Bonnie and Clyde) doesn\u2019t trust Joe at first, but she eventually comes to believe his story. She even helps him. Oh yeah, she has sex with him too. That\u2019s the one thing I don\u2019t like about Three Days of the Condor<\/strong>. That whole bit where they have a heart-to-heart before falling into bed together stops the movie dead in its tracks. Other than that, the film is solid.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Sydney Pollack (The Way We Were) and based on the novel Six Days of the Condor by James Grady, Three Days of the Condor<\/strong> is bolstered by a chilling performance from Max von Sydow (The Seventh Seal) as the hired assassin who orchestrated the office massacre. He handles his business in a cold, precise manner. He doesn\u2019t care about sides either. He\u2019ll work for whoever pays him. The rest of the supporting cast does solid work. Cliff Robertson (Charly) shows up as Higgins, the deputy director of the CIA. He might be involved in what\u2019s going on or he might not be. John Houseman, the go-to actor in the 70s when you needed a stuffy type, puts in an appearance as a senior intelligence officer who misses the clarity of the post-WWI era.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Redford does a surprisingly good job as a bookish type forced into the field by circumstance. He\u2019s not the two-fisted, gun-wielding action hero we usually see in movies like this. He\u2019s about as far from James Bond as you can get. He has certain skills that come in handy though. He knows his way around the inner workings of the telephone system so tapping a phone to get intel is a snap. Dunaway is pretty good as the hostage-turned-romantic interest. I realize moviegoers want to see the two stars form a romantic relationship, but it doesn\u2019t add anything to the story. It\u2019s unnecessary.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Believe it or not, Three Days of the Condor<\/strong> is a Christmas movie. That is to say, it\u2019s set at Christmas. I love New York at Christmastime. Pollack makes great use of the gritty NYC locations with the crowded sidewalks, busy streets and people rushing around. The cinematography by Owen Roizman is a true asset. Then again, I love the look of 70s movies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It may not be a thrill-a-minute actioner, but Three Days of the Condor<\/strong> is anything but boring. It held my interest throughout. I enjoyed watching Redford play the spy game. The final scene is particularly cool. The way his character finally resolves things is really something. Bottom line, Three Days of the Condor<\/strong> is a good suspenseful spy thriller brimming with paranoia. It\u2019s still effective 50 years later.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three Days of the Condor (1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 118 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, a scene of sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sydney Pollack\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dave Grusin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Owen Roizman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 25, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow, John Houseman, Addison Powell, Walter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holiday-movies","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Three-Days-of-the-Condor-PI.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10720,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10558\/revisions\/10720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}