{"id":6364,"date":"2016-04-23T23:08:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-23T22:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=6364"},"modified":"2016-04-23T23:18:09","modified_gmt":"2016-04-23T22:18:09","slug":"three-days-of-the-condor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2016\/04\/23\/three-days-of-the-condor\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Days of the Condor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Three<\/a>
Three Days of the Condor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Dual Format (DVD + Blu-ray)

\nRelease date:<\/B> 11 April 2016

\nDistributor:<\/B> Eureka Entertainment

\nDirector:<\/B> Sydney Pollack

\nWriters:<\/B> Lorenzo Semple Jr., David Rayfiel

\nCast:<\/B> Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway

\nUSA 1975

\n118 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sydney Pollack\u2019s tale of CIA deceit is a great New York film and an entertaining conspiracy thriller. <\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.\u2019<\/i>
Joseph Heller, Catch-22<\/i><\/p>\n

In the early 1970s the American people were finally becoming aware of the nefarious doings of the Central Intelligence Agency. The New York Times was publishing the leaked \u2018Pentagon Papers\u2019 (despite CIA attempts to block this); The Rockefeller Commission revealed Project MKUltra, an illegal mind-control programme; and the Watergate Scandal was slowly revealing how responsibility for such criminality reached highest level \u2013 the President himself. There were accusations of the CIA illegally printing their own bank notes; of supporting Pinochet\u2019s coup d\u2019\u00e9tat in Chile; and even an accusation that one operative had been selling real-life plots to spy novelists. <\/p>\n

A short cycle of films appeared around this time that seemed to reflect this world of surveillance and paranoia, cover-ups and lies. In Three Days of the Condor<\/i> (1975) the enemy within is clearly labelled as the CIA. The film\u2019s hero Joe Turner (Robert Redford) works for \u2018the company\u2019, employed to read books and add his analysis to a computer database. He returns from lunch to find all his co-workers murdered. [SPOILER ALERT]<\/b> He soon discovers the murderers are within the CIA, but the real bad guys are a \u2018CIA within the CIA\u2019 \u2013 an extremist splinter group with aims to invade the Middle East unknown to \u2018the company\u2019 heads. It was perhaps this \u2018few bad apples\u2019 cop-out that helped placate the CIA chiefs who were invited to a pre-release screening. [END OF SPOILER]<\/b><\/p>\n

Sydney Pollack directs with great style and invention. The use of real locations gives the film a realism that recalls Henry Hathaway\u2019s FBI film The House on 92nd Street<\/i> (1945). Three Days of the Condor<\/i> is also a great New York film. We see the Twin Towers, the Guggenheim Museum, Central Park, deli sandwiches, pretzels and yellow taxis galore. It is less a \u2018gritty realism\u2019 and more of a \u2018shabby realism\u2019 \u2013 grey rainy weather, overflowing rubbish bins, an office of jammed printers, awkwardly stacked books and chain-smoking receptionists. Even the opening credits with their computer-style font \u2013 which must have made the film seem very up-to-date in 1975 \u2013 remind us of the dull technology of the workplace. This may be a spy-thriller but we are a long way from James Bond. <\/p>\n

The cinematography is self-consciously stylised with shots through branches and windscreen wipers but in general this adds nicely to the mood of the film. It is only in the love scene \u2013 where the love making is intercut with black and white artistic photographs of empty park benches to the soundtrack of the ubiquitous sexy saxophone (perhaps a novel idea in 1975) \u2013 that the style is over-cooked. The intricacies of plot (I\u2019m still not sure why they were after him) and the occasional ethical and political pronouncements are not allowed to intrude too much. It is of course a major Hollywood studio film with A-list stars and it would be unfair to expect a detailed analysis of CIA wrongdoings. What we have is a genre film \u2013 a man-on-the-run thriller much like Hitchcock\u2019s North by Northwest<\/i> or Sabateur<\/i> \u2013 with the CIA as the \u2018macguffin\u2019. <\/p>\n

The film is fortunate in the casting of Robert Redford as a bookish intellectual who can win a shootout in an alley, kidnap and seduce Faye Dunaway and outfox the CIA phone call tracking unit. Redford can do all these with a degree of plausibility. He can be an appreciator of artistic photography and \u2013 as Dunaway\u2019s character puts it \u2013 he\u2019s \u2018a very sweet man to be with\u2019 \u2013 although the way Dunaway\u2019s character falls for her abductor suggests that the film\u2019s sexual politics are rather less than progressive.<\/p>\n

Although Three Days of the Condor<\/i> is the perhaps a little brother to the genre\u2019s masterpieces \u2013 Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s The Conversation<\/i> (1974) and Alan J. Pakula\u2019s The Parallax View<\/i> (1974) and All the President\u2019s Men<\/i> (1976) \u2013 it a well-crafted and entertaining film with a few political points to be made. Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford were both well-known for their politically liberal tendencies. They had previously worked together on the ecological Western Jeremiah Johnson<\/i> (1972). It is those key liberal values of honesty, openness and democracy that the CIA are shown to be against. But perhaps the only really interesting political point is when Cliff Robertson attempts to defend the CIA as dedicated government agents who believe what they are doing is for the good of the American people. The film ends with Turner putting his trust in that great bastion of the liberal press \u2013 The New York Times<\/i>. In the final freeze-frame the fear and doubt on his face shows what would happen if that freedom of the press were lost. <\/p>\n

Paul Huckerby<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

Watch the trailer:<\/b><\/p>\n