150 Word Review: 'Three Days Of The Condor' (1975)
Bad company
Robert Redford plays a bookish CIA analyst —codenamed Condor—who returns from lunch one day to find himself plunged into a cloak-and-dagger cat-and-mouse game. And he's in top form: smart, handsome, relatable, capable. Few actors could balance beauty and brains like Redford. But there's more to this star vehicle than his easygoing charms.
Directed with style and restraint by Sydney Pollack, this spy thriller is a snapshot of America's political mood during the tumultuous mid-70s: paranoid, distrustful, conspiracy-minded. The Deep State is a bureaucracy that's out of control in Three Days of the Condor, and run by career secret agents who have lost the plot.
The movie features once cutting-edge analog technology from the last century, and a dour, but mesmerizing, Max Von Sydow as an amoral freelance assassin. Faye Dunaway is a civilian who becomes part of the hunt. Back to Redford: his fine, shaggy hair deserved a credit.