Written by James Grady, Lorenzo Semple Jr., and David Rayfiel
Directed by Sydney Pollack
As I sat watching Three Days of the Condor, I couldn’t help but feel I had seen it before. Was it a remake? Was there a remake don of this? Then it hit me: The Bourne Identity. What’s odd is that both films were based on novels and there was no mud-slinging about plagiarism of those, yet the films are remarkably similar. I could also detect elements of so many other spy thrillers I’ve seen over the last couple of decades, yet this was way before any of those.
Directed by Sidney Pollack, Three Days of the Condor stars Robert Redford as Joe Turner, a CIA researcher who returns from lunch one day to find all of his co-workers murdered.  Turner, whose code name is Condor, finds himself on the run. He’s not an experienced agent, but someone who works behind the scenes so he hasn’t been necessarily trained for what he has to do to stay alive.  When they attempt to bring him in, he’s cooperative but he is betrayed and a good friend is murdered.
Turner finds sanctuary in the apartment of a young woman he kidnaps. Kathy (portrayed by Faye Dunaway) soon finds herself not only believing his crazy story but also actively trying to help him.
Pollack did a great job with Three Days of the Condor, but there are still a few issues. Not much can save it from being dated. The cars and clothes make it quite obvious this was the seventies, as does the score. There are also some great scenes filmed in and around the World Trade Center.  You can see what the lobby area looked like a bit if you’ve never seen it.
However, these issues aside, there’s a lot to like here, especially from a time before crazy stunts and car chases were the norm. This is a classic thriller, where the suspense comes from the story more than the action. Redford is magnificent because he’s not relying on the action. Instead, he’s relying on his wits to figure out what’s going on and keep himself alive. Dunaway is nice opposite him and they do share chemistry, but sometimes their relationship felt more like it was forced to try and grab more of a female audience into the theaters.
The supporting cast here is also stellar. Cliff Robertson, Max Von Sydow, and John Houseman are at the CIA. Guesses as to what’s exactly going on there really don’t pay off until the end. I wasn’t sure who to trust although the story seemed to be leaning one way. They bring their experience to the table that works so damn well in this plot that it feels like everything happening could be and is real.
If you’ve never viewed Three Days of the Condor I suggest you check it out. You might be surprised that a good spy thriller can be made without an overabundance of stunts and CGI. A good story and great acting should always lead the way in a good thriller.
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Categories: Movie Reviews
A point of interest: Back in ’97, a group of Danish directors sued a TV network in Denmark for airing “Three Days of the Condor” in “fullscreen” (cropping the original widescreen format to the then-standard 4:3 aspect ratio of TV broadcast images). They claimed this practice of cropping a movie from its original version ran counter to Sydney Pollack’s vision and violated his rights as the copyright owner. Legally, this was the wrong argument to make; Pollack directed the film, but he didn’t own the rights. So…the suit failed.
That said, this might have been the catalyst for studios to stop issuing those dreadful reedited versions of theatrically released films cropped to fit the 4;3 aspect of old-school TVs and hastened the popularity of widescreen TVs. (You can tell I despised fullscreen versions, even though for almost 30 years it was the home video format, can’t you… 🙂 )
I agree, although I think pan-and-scan was worse.
Well, “pan and scan” is just another term for “fullscreen.” It’s the technical name for the process, while “fullscreen” is the end result.
Pan-and-scan is where they full screen it but shift the picture to cut out one side or another when they think something outside the 4:3 ratio is important.
Ah. My humanities professor might have erred, then, when we discussed the topic of why VHS was actually not a good medium for home media releases of theatrical movies. He conflated pan-and-scan with basic cropping, then.
Either way, editing widescreen movies for TV screens of the time, while it might have been “necessary” in the television industry (it wasn’t, but….) is meddling with a director’s vision. When I was (blissfully) unaware of it, I didn’t mind “fullscreen.” After I learned about it…well…I did.
(I never had an issue with the black bars at the top or bottom of a “letterboxed” widescreen image on old school tapes that were released in the late 1990s or early gen DVDs. Others thought they were getting ripped off and insisted on buying fullscreen, believing that that’s how the movies originally looked. 🙂
I agree. With rectangular televisions so prevalent now, I still get the bars but they’re not as bad. You’d think they’d have figured it out better by now, though.