by Flack » Fri Apr 30, 2021 6:42 am
In Three Days of the Condor Robert Redford plays Joe Turnner (aka "Condor"), a man hired by the CIA to read books. Turnner, charming and a bit aloof, doesn't seem like your typical CIA employee. He spends his days working in an anonymous office in New York City, scanning books for plots that could possibly reveal real-world missions.
On a typical day, Turnner's biggest problem is arriving to work on time. He also likes to duck out for lunch by taking the building's rear exit, which is not visible from the street. During one of those lunches, Turnner returns to his office to find all of his coworkers have been brutally murdered. Afraid that the assassins will be targeting him too, Turnner grabs a pistol hidden in the office and calls his superior officer from the nearest payphone. A rendezvous is scheduled by the CIA to bring Turnner in, but when that goes sideways, Turnner quickly realizes the only person he can trust is himself.
This movie is classified as a political thriller, with an emphasis on thriller. Like Rosemary's Baby, Three Days of the Condor cranks up the paranoia and tension to almost unbearable levels. Every stranger on the street becomes a potential assassin. Some of them are.
I had never heard of Three Days of the Condor until infamous hacker Kevin Mitnick went on the run in the 90s. Mitnick's alias was Condor, the same as Turnner's from the movie, and it's easy to see why he chose that. In the film, Turnner was a loner on the run who employs multiple tricks (including using a phone lineman's set and other phone-related tricks) that Mitnick himself used when attempting to avoid capture.
Had I been born 10 years earlier, I suspect Three Days of the Condor would have been my WarGames or Cloak and Dagger. It is a great (borderline perfect) story about a bookworm going up against a corrupt system and, at least we think, outsmarting them. The film's ending is a bit ambiguous and there's that old saying about winning the fight but losing the war that applies here. As someone in the film explains to Turnner, you can walk away, and someone familiar with you may roll up in a car and ask you to get in and that'll be it. The man then hands Turnner a gun and says, "for that day." Like the ending to the Sopranos, it's a reminder that even with it's over, it's never over.
10/10.
In [i]Three Days of the Condor[/i] Robert Redford plays Joe Turnner (aka "Condor"), a man hired by the CIA to read books. Turnner, charming and a bit aloof, doesn't seem like your typical CIA employee. He spends his days working in an anonymous office in New York City, scanning books for plots that could possibly reveal real-world missions.
On a typical day, Turnner's biggest problem is arriving to work on time. He also likes to duck out for lunch by taking the building's rear exit, which is not visible from the street. During one of those lunches, Turnner returns to his office to find all of his coworkers have been brutally murdered. Afraid that the assassins will be targeting him too, Turnner grabs a pistol hidden in the office and calls his superior officer from the nearest payphone. A rendezvous is scheduled by the CIA to bring Turnner in, but when that goes sideways, Turnner quickly realizes the only person he can trust is himself.
This movie is classified as a political thriller, with an emphasis on thriller. Like [i]Rosemary's Baby[/i], [i]Three Days of the Condor[/i] cranks up the paranoia and tension to almost unbearable levels. Every stranger on the street becomes a potential assassin. Some of them are.
I had never heard of [i]Three Days of the Condor[/i] until infamous hacker Kevin Mitnick went on the run in the 90s. Mitnick's alias was Condor, the same as Turnner's from the movie, and it's easy to see why he chose that. In the film, Turnner was a loner on the run who employs multiple tricks (including using a phone lineman's set and other phone-related tricks) that Mitnick himself used when attempting to avoid capture.
Had I been born 10 years earlier, I suspect [i]Three Days of the Condor[/i] would have been my [i]WarGames[/i] or [i]Cloak and Dagger[/i]. It is a great (borderline perfect) story about a bookworm going up against a corrupt system and, at least we think, outsmarting them. The film's ending is a bit ambiguous and there's that old saying about winning the fight but losing the war that applies here. As someone in the film explains to Turnner, you can walk away, and someone familiar with you may roll up in a car and ask you to get in and that'll be it. The man then hands Turnner a gun and says, "for that day." Like the ending to the Sopranos, it's a reminder that even with it's over, it's never over.
10/10.