It’s simple economics. Today it’s oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Why it’s a left-wing film
In the great (and greatly missed) Sydney Pollack’s absolutely top-shelf conspiracy thriller, the CIA is essentially made up of two warring but strikingly similar sides of the same coin. Both are more than willing to invade foreign countries in order to steal natural resources, be they oil, food or whatever else the American public is addicted to and will demand once it runs out. The only difference is that one side wants to wage those imperialist wars now and the other prefers to wait until it’s more necessary.
Both sides, however, are more than willing to murder in cold blood one another and anyone who might leak their sinister plans.
The hero of this story is Joe Turner (Robert Redford) who discovers that we’re no better than the other side and therefore finds it noble to leak our darkest national security secrets — the kind that will bring this country to its knees — to that stalwart institution of truth and fairness, The New York Times.
So suck on that, Righties.
Why it’s a great film
In this time of war, with most of Hollywood sympathetic to the other side, every God-fearing American patriot should thump down on their knees and thank the Almighty that for over a decade now, present-day Hollywood has been completely incapable of making a decent left-wing film, much less something as entertaining, well-crafted, and blazingly intelligent as “Three Days of the Condor.” The story is about as anti-American as they come. We’re presented with a United States run by evil imperialists who hire ruthless assassins to murder anyone who gets in their way — including American citizens, all in a last gasp attempt to hold tight to a way of life that is slowing dying due to our own rampant and selfish consumerism. This is a movie so effective that you believe everything the director wants you to believe –not in the real world, but within the world of the film.
For the hundredth time I watched this again last night and for the hundredth time, from opening scene to close, I was completely caught up in the story; in a world filled with double-crosses, competing political agendas, polite assassins, deadly mailmen who know kung fu, and beautiful women willing to give aid, comfort, and sex to desperate men on the run — a world in which the only thing that will keep you alive is a healthy dose of paranoia.
And I could watch it all over again tonight and enjoy it just as much.
Robert Redford is superb as Joe Turner (code name Condor), the low-level CIA intelligence analyst based in Manhattan who works in a department responsible for reading everything published throughout the world. The idea is to seek out any hidden codes or the passing on of secrets by matching the plot of the publication’s story to actual CIA plans and operations. These readers don’t know the CIA’s secrets. Instead, their job is to feed everything into a computer that does the search for them. Turner, a genius who bristles against the agency’s stricter protocols does, albeit to the beat of his own irreverent drummer, serve his country faithfully, but his loyalties will be tested and his natural cynicism confirmed after he returns from lunch and finds everyone in his department gunned down.
In a way these murders were Turner’s fault. A particular book printed only in certain countries caught his eye and he kept pressing his superiors at Langley for answers. Unbeknownst to him, the book revealed a CIA plot to invade the Middle East and capture the oil fields. Now Turner, who’s no field agent, is caught right in the middle of an inter-agency war and will have to use all his natural intelligence and everything he learned from reading those books to stay alive in a deadly game where no one can be trusted.
As the woman he randomly kidnaps off the street, Faye Dunaway is absolutely superb playing the vulnerable, wounded photographer with an emotional hole in her life that Turner is able to temporarily fill. The Oscar-winner is so famous for her legendary portrayals of neurotic, brittle, controlling icy-blond characters that you have to constantly remind yourself that this sweet, young accessible and sympathetic woman with mousy brown hair is the same Faye Dunaway. Though she’s only on screen for the film’s middle hour, this is truly a performance that deserves more recognition.
Also going for “Condor” is one of the all-time great first acts. The way in which Pollack establishes Redford’s character and the comfortable world in which he exists only to have it all taken away in a brutally violent sequence anchored by Max Von Sydow’s brilliant turn as a cold, mannerly assassin…
“Would you step away from the window, please?”
“I won’t scream,”
“I know.”
…that’s how you open a thriller. You pull the rug right out from under your protagonist by tossing him into the deep end where mere mortals go to drown.
Damn. Good. Storytelling. Every shot counts and some, like the woman pushing the baby carriage who spooks Turner, hit you right between the eyes (the editors were nominated for Oscars). Every line of dialogue matters and the score is letter perfect.
There’s also the endlessly fascinating backdrop of the City of New York circa-1975, in all its grit, grime, crime and danger. This is an amazing city that might not have been all that much fun for its citizens, but as a film setting there’s nothing like it; the nondescript cars, crumbling buildings, dirty streets, and depressingly grey skies. This was a time and place that gave filmmakers an added dimension and character to their story the likes of which we’ll never see again.
Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack
Redford and Pollack worked together six times before the director’s death in 2008. Their most famous pairing is probably 1985’s Oscar-winning “Out of Africa,” but after “Condor,” I would strongly recommend their first film, 1972’s “Jeremiah Johnson,” a respected but still under-valued Western where Redford delivers what is, for my money, the only truly great performance of his career.
What’s not on the list:
Class Action (1991) – This would’ve made a Top 40 and I really wanted to include it in order to gush over two of my favorite actors, Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who play father and daughter attorneys on the opposite sides of a wrongful death court case. The main problem is that the personal stuff gets a little melodramatic. The performances, however, are exceptional and well worth your time, and that includes Fred Thompson who has a terrific scene in a pivotal supporting role.
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – I find this commie fairy tale terminally boring and laughably stupid.
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