Don't Give The Bird To A Solid Political Thriller Like Three Days of the Condor

You ever feel like you just missed something important at your job? Like, maybe you turned your back for two seconds to help a customer and you suddenly missed some important instructions or orders from your boss? Boy does Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) know that feeling. He works for a C.I.A. branch that's dedicated to looking over reading materials (like novels) to see if they overlap with actual secret C.I.A. plans. It's not glamorous, but it's a living. Anywho, one day he goes out to a diner around the corner to pick up lunch for his co-workers and comes back to discover that everybody in his office has been viciously murdered by unknown enemy forces.


Understandably frightened and confused on what to do next, Turner contacts his superiors, which include Higgins (Cliff Robertson), on what exactly to do next. Instructions he's given to get out of the situation safely lead him to nearly be assassinated by a member of his own government. Now he doesn't know who he can trust as he holes up with Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway) in her apartment as he navigates the twisty-turny plot of Three Days of the Condor, one of the most iconic political thrillers of the 1970s. An era of American political upheaval and corruption was reflected in cinema that typically depicted powerful American political individuals as nefarious forces out to wipe out common citizens.

In the scenes where Three Days of the Condor is adhering to an intense political thriller aesthetic, it really does shine. Director Sydney Pollack is so good at executing nail-biter scenes of Turner just trying to make it down a hallway without getting offed by enemy forces. Much of this tension is nicely subdued, characters put on a casual exterior while carrying interior motivations that put them in inevitable conflict with one another. This is most notably seen in a scene where Turner shares an elevator with notorious assassin Joubert (Max von Sydow), Turner isn't even fully aware of Jourbert's identity at this point in time but there's already a sense of unease in their interactions that will leave you on the edge of your seat.

A subsequent sequence showing Turner collecting a gaggle of people to surround him so that he can avoid being assassinated is another example of how Three Days of the Condor wrings excellent suspense out of its characters. Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel's screenplay is good at concocting such intense set-pieces as well as delivering genuinely unexpected plot turns. That latter element is crucial for these kinds of political thrillers but it can be hard to execute them without having them come off as merely cheap shock value. Luckily, Three Days of the Condor makes its plot twists work thanks to how they're usually around to further morally complicate the world Joseph Turner has entered rather than existing simply for the sake of having twists in the story.

This is especially notable in a third act turn that ends up upending the expected dynamic between Joubert and Turner. This detour in the expected direction of Three Days of the Condor especially fascinating in how it lends a new layer of moral dimensionality to someone who, up to this point, has been seen as mostly a prototype for No Country for Old Men Anton Chigurh. Turner's world is always revealing itself to be far more complex than he could have ever imagined and the plot twists in Three Days of the Condor nicely serve their primary function of aiding this ongoing revelation. This part of the protagonist's experience is also well-handled in Robert Redford's lead performance which believably portrays Turner as a normal fellow out of his depth, Redford effectively captures Turner being incredulous at the circumstances he's become trapped in.

Unfortunately, if there is a major weak spot to be found in Three Days of the Condor, it's in our other lead character, Kathy Hale. Portrayed by Faye Dunaway, Hale turns out to be a total waste of Dunaway's talents as a performer since she's only around to serve as a requisite love interest for Turner and never gets a chance to develop her own personality. To add insult to injury, the scenes between Hale and Turner just aren't all that interesting, their romance isn't very believable and their dialogue exchanges are usually clumsy rather than humorously romantic. Whenever the movie stops to focus on them, it comes grinding to a halt. Luckily, much of Three Days of the Condor centers on what it does best which is sequences hinged on riveting suspense over who exactly Joseph Turner can trust.