Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor is a 1975 American political thriller film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, and Max von Sydow. The screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel was based on the 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor by James Grady.
Set mainly in New York City and Washington, D.C., the film is about a bookish CIA researcher who comes back from lunch one day to discover his co-workers murdered, then subsequently tries to avoid his own murder and outwit those responsible and understand their motives. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing. Semple and Rayfiel received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.
Joe Turner is a bookish CIA analyst, codenamed "Condor", who works at the American Literary Historical Society in New York City, which is actually a clandestine CIA office. The staff members examine books, newspapers, and magazines from around the world to compare them to actual operations or to find ideas. Turner files a report to CIA headquarters on a thriller novel with strange plot elements that has been translated into several languages despite poor sales.
As Turner leaves through a back door to get staff lunches, armed men enter the office and murder the other staffers there. Returning to find his co-workers dead, he grabs a gun and exits the building. He contacts the CIA's New York headquarters in the World Trade Center from a phone booth and is given instructions to meet Wicks, his head of department, who will take him to safety. Turner insists that Wicks bring somebody familiar, since he has never met his departmental head. Wicks brings Sam Barber, a college friend of Turner who is also a non-field CIA employee. The rendezvous is a trap and Wicks attempts to kill Turner, who wounds him before escaping. Wicks kills Barber to eliminate a witness and blames Turner for both shootings. Later, Wicks is killed by an intruder in his hospital room.
Turner encounters a woman named Kathy Hale and forces her to take him to her apartment. He holds Hale hostage while he attempts to figure out what is happening. Hale slowly comes to trust Turner, and they become lovers. Joubert, a European who led the massacre of Turner's co-workers, discovers Turner's hiding place. Turner visits Sam's apartment where he encounters Joubert. Outside the building, Joubert tries to shoot Turner, who manages to escape. The next morning, a hitman disguised as a mailman arrives at Hale's apartment, but Turner manages to kill him.
No longer able to trust anyone, Turner plays a cat-and-mouse game with Higgins, the deputy director of the CIA's New York division. With Hale's help, Turner abducts Higgins, who identifies Joubert as a freelance assassin who has undertaken assignments for the CIA. Released and back at his office, Higgins discovers that the "mailman" who attacked Turner worked with Joubert on a previous operation and that their CIA case officer was Wicks.
After discovering Joubert's location, Turner traces a phone call and learns the name and address of Leonard Atwood, CIA Deputy Director of Operations for the Middle East. Confronting Atwood at gunpoint in his mansion near Washington, D.C., Turner suggests that his own original report filed to CIA headquarters had exposed a rogue CIA operation to seize Middle Eastern oil fields; fearful of its disclosure, Atwood had privately ordered Turner's section eliminated.
As Atwood confirms this, Joubert enters and unexpectedly kills him, faking a suicide. Atwood's superiors had hired Joubert to eliminate someone who was about to become an embarrassment, overriding Atwood's original contract for Joubert to kill Turner. Joubert suggests that the resourceful Turner leave the country and even become an assassin himself. Turner rejects the suggestion but heeds Joubert's warning that the CIA will try to eliminate him as another embarrassment, possibly entrapping him through a trusted acquaintance.
Back in New York, Turner has a rendezvous with Higgins near Times Square. Higgins describes the oilfield plan as a contingency "game" that was planned within the CIA without approval from above. He defends the project, suggesting that when oil shortages cause a major economic crisis, the American people will accept any measures to keep their comfortable lives. Turner then reveals that he has given full details to The New York Times. Higgins retorts that Turner is about to become a very lonely man and questions whether the whistleblowing will really be published. "They'll print it," Turner defiantly replies. As "Condor" walks away, Higgins shouts after him "How do you know?"
The film was shot on location in New York City (including the World Trade Center, 55 East 77th Street, Brooklyn Heights, The Ansonia, and Central Park), New Jersey (including Hoboken Terminal), and Washington, D.C. (including the National Mall).
All music by Dave Grusin, except where noted.
The film was released in September 1975, earning $8,925,000 in theatrical rentals in the United States and Canada by the end of the year. It went on to earn rentals of $20 million in the United States and Canada from a gross of $41.5 million. It earned rentals of $32.7 million worldwide.
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 87% of 53 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review, and the average rating was 7.4/10; the site's consensus is: "This post-Watergate thriller captures the paranoid tenor of the times, thanks to Sydney Pollack's taut direction and excellent performances from Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway."
When first released, the film was reviewed positively by Vincent Canby, critic for The New York Times, who wrote that the film "is no match for stories in your local newspaper", but it benefits from good acting and directing. Variety called it a B movie that was given a big budget despite its lack of substance. Roger Ebert wrote, "Three Days of the Condor is a well-made thriller, tense and involving, and the scary thing, in these months after Watergate, is that it's all too believable."
John Simon wrote how the book, Six Days of the Condor, had been rewritten for the film:
In closing his review, Simon said the lesson he derived from the film was, "we must be grateful to the CIA: it does what our schools no longer do — engage some people to read books."
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard lists the film as an example of a new genre of "retro cinema" in his essay on history in the now influential book, Simulacra and Simulation (1981):
Some critics described the film as a piece of political propaganda, as it was released soon after the "Family Jewels" scandal came to light in December 1974, which exposed a variety of CIA "dirty tricks". However, in an interview with Jump Cut, Pollack explained that the film was written solely to be a spy thriller and that production on the film was nearly over by the time the Family Jewels revelations were made, so even if they had wanted to take advantage of them, it was far too late in the filmmaking process to do so. He said that despite both Pollack and Redford being well-known political liberals, they were only interested in making the film because an espionage thriller was a genre neither of them had previously explored.
According to former Soviet intelligence officer Sergei Tretyakov, the fictional clandestine office shown in Three Days of Condor convinced KGB generals to establish an equivalent office in Moscow, the Scientific Research Institute of Intelligence Problems (Russian: Научно-исследовательский институт разведывательных проблем).
In 1997, The Association of Danish Film Directors (Danske Filminstruktører), on behalf of the director Sydney Pollack, sued Danmarks Radio on the grounds that cropping the film for television compromised the artistic integrity of the original film and that broadcasting the film in a reduced screen version violated Pollack's copyright. However, the case was unsuccessful because the film rights to Three Days of the Condor were not actually owned by Pollack. The case is believed to have been the first legal challenge to the practice of panning and scanning widescreen films on screens with a 4:3 aspect ratio.
In March 2015, Skydance Media in partnership with MGM Television and Paramount Television announced that they would produce a TV series remake of the film. In February 2017, Max Irons was cast as Joe Turner in the series entitled Condor for Audience.
This eventually became a series developed by Todd Katzberg, Jason Smilovic, and Ken Robinson. The series premiered on June 6, 2018 on Audience. In July 2018, the series had been renewed for a second season. However, in January 2020, Audience announced it would be ending operations in its current format, effectively cancelling the show. The second season, already filmed at the time of the announcement, premiered on June 9, 2020, on C More and RTÉ2.