Browse: Home / Film on the Internet: THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • Film on the Internet: BASKET CASE
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray
  • Taco Break: Overplayed But Still Funny
  • Celebrating the Living: Mercedes Ruehl
  • Attention Must Be Paid: Arthur Anderson

Film on the Internet: THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR

Posted By ZoeZ on September 18, 2019 in Short Articles | Leave a response

In one of my favorite bits of movie adaptation trivia, Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor was based on James Grady’s novel Six Days of the Condor; everything in Hollywood has to happen faster, you know.  The time-compression is actually a good choice–even over the span of only three days, this is a thoughtful, unsettling spy drama rather than a breakneck and bloody one.  If it ran too long, it might get dull; as it stands, it has a bottled-lightning kind of tension that works extremely well.

Robert Redford plays Joe Turner, a CIA agent whose daily work is poring through books looking for codes and leaked confidential details.  When he’s plunged into danger and violence, he keeps forlornly insisting that he just reads books–but whatever his background, he proves exceptionally competent, physically and mentally, in dealing with what’s going on.  It’s a little bit of a waste of the hinted-at “bookish Everyman” vibe, but then, if you really want an Everyman, you don’t cast Robert Redford.  Redford is aspirational, not relatable, and he works that quality–and stunning handsomeness–well here.  The plot may not adequately explain why Joe Turner is the way he is, but Redford blows through that hiccup and gives an intense and convincing performance as a man being rapidly refined under extreme pressure.

He’s well-balanced by Faye Dunaway as photographer Kathy Hale, who has the same dreamy quality of being awakened from the pretense of being only an ordinary person.  Their chemistry is natural, and one of the things the film gets right is that the sexual and romantic tension between them develops almost independently of the trust, and at a very different pace; Kathy’s understandable terror doesn’t abate right away just because her kidnapper is played by Robert Redford.  There are a lot of spy stories where a male spy enlists the help of a female civilian, who of course begins to fall in love with him, but this is one of the most persuasive:

Kathy: Sometimes, I— I take a picture that… isn’t like me, but I took it, so it is like me. It has to be. I put those pictures away.

Joe: I’d like to see those pictures.

Kathy: We don’t know each other that that well.

Joe: Do you know anybody that well?

Kathy: I don’t think I want to know you very well. I don’t think you’re gonna live much longer.

Most of all, Three Days of the Condor wins for me because it gets the feeling of espionage right–it may not be accurate, but it’s a vivid look at a level of dirty, long-term gamesmanship, one where the CIA doesn’t oppose a fixed enemy as much as it does any weakening of the power structure.  What are a few deaths if everything goes on as it’s supposed to?  The movie’s true arc isn’t Joe becoming competent but him becoming independent, finding an idealism and a ruthlessness that can exist side-by-side, without the amorality and cynicism that the CIA and assassin Joubert (Max Von Sydow) both have to offer in their own different ways.

And the movie’s final strength is accepting, and making Joe accept, that that kind of moral independence can get you killed.

 

Three Days of the Condor is available for free with Amazon Prime Video.

Posted in Short Articles | Tagged Faye Dunaway, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack

About the Author

lamijames@gmail.com'

ZoeZ

Related Posts

Pictures of a Revolution: 2005→

Film on the Internet: SNEAKERS→

Film on the Internet: SPY GAME→

Film on the Internet: ALL IS LOST (2013)→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    33818 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    27447 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    25060 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    20093 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • Yvonne, or: CASABLANCA In One Character and Three Scenes

    11136 views / Posted August 21, 2014
  • Film on the Internet: BASKET CASE

    March 22, 2023 / ZoeZ
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

    March 21, 2023 / Greta Taylor
  • Taco Break: Overplayed But Still Funny

    March 20, 2023 / Tristan "Drunk Napoleon" Nankervis
  • Don't mess with a Mercedes Ruehl character!

    Celebrating the Living: Mercedes Ruehl

    March 19, 2023 / Gillianren
  • You, too, can hear this image once you know the voice

    Attention Must Be Paid: Arthur Anderson

    March 18, 2023 / Gillianren

Last Tweets

  • Film on the Internet: BASKET CASE - https://t.co/ncsoMwqyRT, 13 hours ago
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray - https://t.co/M5EgBdApIf, Mar 21
  • Taco Break: Overplayed But Still Funny - https://t.co/U2QP75rwcu, Mar 20

©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

Menu

  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login
Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!