Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Pretty Good

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

A real thriller depicting a non-conventional 'hero' who manages to uncover a dark plot though his intelligence rather than his physique and brute strength. Redford lives up to the expectations of a hero as he manages to stay ahead of the game and situation at hand, all through his intellectual power that he accumulated through his CIA career (with respect to the film).Very well presented, and the film kept me hooked up for all the 117 minutes. An interesting plot that builds up nicely and engages the viewer to participate in uncovering the truth when all his dear colleagues have been assassinated.

No one can make a suspenseful political movie in the 1970s like Robert Redford can! If you liked All the President's Men or a slightly older Redford in Truth, add Three Days of the Condor to your list this weekend.In this one, he plays an analyst for the CIA. He turns in a seemingly innocuous report, but soon afterwards, everyone in his office gets killed. He tries to reach out to the CIA for protection, but finds out no one can be trusted and nowhere is safe. . .Besides that slightly cheesy plot description, there's really nothing cheesy about this political thriller. It's not an action comedy; you're not going to hear Robert Redford cracking jokes after killing someone. This is a strict drama, with tensions mounting slowly like a modern-day Hitchcock movie. And, in true 70s style, there's lots of fluffy hairdos, aviator sunglasses, mustaches, and Faye Dunaway. Also, I'm not going to give anything away, but Cliff Robertson's famous social commentary speech is from this movie—in case you've seen that clip on TV or during a political film montage. This is the kind of movie that will make you think, and it's just as relevant today as it was forty years ago.

It's not often I go above 8 in my scores, but for Three Days of the Condor I'll do it. We've watched this film four times now and it gets better each time. I'm not sure what genre this film fits into - thriller, conspiracy, espionage (probably 70's paranoia) - but it's a fine effort. It's a slow-burner, sets several red-herrings early on and leaves the viewer to make his own way, working out what could be going on rather than being propelled onward by intrusive re-caps and fancy effects. The tension starts early on in the office where Turner finds his colleagues murdered and it never really lets up. As well as a fine performance by Redford, Max von Sydow puts in a chillingly quiet turn as the well-mannered killer. A superb film for discerning viewers, and it has that 'seventies vibe', one of the reasons I watch these films.

A carnage of six people in a CIA covert operation for some obscure reason that simply doesn't hold water as justification by the end of the movie. And the audience is somehow asked to believe that professional assassin Jourbet/Max Von Snydow, who would have shot Turner/Redford had he been present, is now Redford's savior by the end of the movie, a plot twist with the barest of motivation.But hey, it works. It worked in 1975 when it first came out and still works in 2016 with repeated viewings.I thought way back then when I first saw this, that it is an extension of the closing line from Moby Dick; "I alone survived"... Or in the case of Turner/Redford: I survived ALONE.... Turner ends up being the spy left in the cold, never to be redeemed. He has betrayed the CIA by ferreting out its duplicity and demonic ways and the CIA has betrayed him, by letting him live while his colleagues died as martyrs to the CIA.Kathy Hale/Fay Dunaway and her photographic artwork portraying isolation, provides an interesting sub-plot to emphasize the major theme.And at the end, Higgins point becomes part of the CIA's betrayal of Turner; even if it was printed, would anyone believe, or care? The movie still works after all these years, and it works because it is about that existential loneliness that is the bane of many a life. The suspense leads to a surprising existential moment for a conclusion.