08/07/09 - Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor (1975, 117 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073802/

Following Le samouraï, I watch another older thriller. I'd heard some good things about it so I was looking forward to a good show.

The movie follows Robert Redford as Joe Turner. He's a CIA agent who works reading just about everything in hopes of finding ideas or hidden political messages. When his office gets shot up and everyone is murdered but him (he was out getting lunch), he slowly pieces together a plot that involves one of his book discoveries. Through a whirlwind story, Turner meets new allies and enemies. Featuring prominently in the film are: Faye Dunaway (Turner's "kidnapped" new friend Kathy Hale), Cliff Robertson (Deputy Director Higgins), and Max von Sydow (assassin Joubert).

The acting here is pretty good. Obviously Redford is the focus here and he carries his weight pretty well. I haven't seen much of Redford besides Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but he has an amazing presence on the screen. Max von Sydow was the other actor with which I was most impressed. He played a pretty cool assassin. Dunaway and Robertson are fine but didn't stun or wow me like Redford and Sydow did.

Being a thriller, the movie has to have some edge of your seat action. There were plenty of these moments. I liked the unique way of escaping the office shootout of Turner maybe the most. The film had a multitude of tense scenes and that was great. Some down parts were the scenes with Dunaway. It wasn't that her acting was bad, it was just that the romance seemed forced for the movie and took away from the much more interesting action-y scenes.

Overall, I gave this film a 7/10. It was almost a thrill a minute. The romance detracted, though, and some other moments moved slowly. Overall, though, I was impressed with this older flick.