Three Days of the Condor
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 04/11/2006 Run time: 117 minutes Rating: R
Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack continued their longtime collaboration (the actor and director have worked together on Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, The Electric Horseman, and Out of Africa, among other films) with this taut spy drama. Redford plays a reader for U.S. intelligence who becomes a hunted man after he is not among the victims of a mass murder of his colleagues. Faye Dunaway does solid work as the frightened and mystified woman whom he forces to conceal him, and Max von Sydow is appropriately cool as a professional assassin. That same, sustained tone of danger and expectation that made Pollack's The Firm so much fun can be found in this 1975 thriller, albeit with an appropriate dose of post-Watergate paranoia. --Tom Keogh
Three Days of the Condor Accessories
 The Day of the Jackal
Marathon Man
Sneakers (Collector's Edition)
All the President's Men (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Spy Who Came in from the Cold - Criterion Collection
The Sting
The Conversation
The Boys From Brazil
Eye of the Needle
The Odessa File
Three Days of the Condor Reviews
I try to watch it at least once a yearalways on a rainy Sunday afternoon in November (to really get into the Condor setting, I suppose). Condor is one of my all time favorite movies. There are so many nuances of the film that one needs to watch it several times to fully appreciate the film. I have watched this movie at least twenty times throughout the years, and think I fully understood it for the first time in the last viewing.
Joseph Turner (Robert Redford once again as the all-American) gets to read for a living, analyzing texts for the CIA through the cover of the "American Literary Historical Society." When it's his turn to go out for everybody's lunch, he comes back to find them all dead. (Keep an eye out for von Sydow's code name. From then on, Turner (code name "Condor") is on the run from the killers and from the government with only photographer Kathy (striking Faye Dunaway) his only, albeit reluctant, ally. Setting Three Days of the Condor during the Christmas season does little to bring tidings of comfort and joy. (The Parallax View) and David Rayfiel and the direction of Sydney Pollack (his fourth of seven collaborations with Redford) deliver the right amounts of post-Watergate paranoia and intrigue. The result in a fun thriller that, while very tied to its period, also reminds us that the priorities of the government have been the same for a long time.
But the script by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. It is a nice little in-joke connected to his appearance in The Exorcist). As an enigmatic professional killer, Max von Sydow heads an impressive supporting cast that also features Cliff Robertson and John Houseman.
Robert Redford is great in it, but he is great in most every movie. This is a great movie. Enjoy I had it on VHS, but wanted to have it on DVD.
No Robert Redford collection is complete - or should even be started, without Three Days of the Condor. I strongly recommend purchase of this movie. Perhaps the best movie ever done by Robert Redford. Faye Dunaway added immeasurably to this performance.
Superb jazz music score, and an intriguing series of events leading to an unpredictable ending. Superb production. As close to edge-of-your-seat as you can get with a movie. Well acted and directed. Very interesting story.
This movie could use a DVD do-over to take advantage of its continued popularity. Unarguably a classic- the dvd I have is sad with nary a bonus feature. Sorry- are we reviewing the film or the DVD of the film.
|
