Three Days of the Condor
Joe Turner, bright, carefree, and late for work glides along the crowded streets on his moped. Joe stops at the office of the American Literary Historical Society, runs up the steps, and presses the buzzer. A woman sitting at a desk just inside the doorway slides open her desk drawer revealing a handgun. She presses the door release and closes the drawer.
Unbeknown to the seven people working in the building, their arrivals are being observed by a man sitting in a car opposite the building. Joe (Robert Redford) hurries inside eager to learn if he has received a reply to a report he submitted to the New York Center office.
Later in the morning, noticing that Joe is not working on his assignment, his supervisor asks if he is happy in his position. Joe replies that he is bothered by the fact that he can’t tell people what he does for a living saying, “I actually trust a few people.”
Oftentimes one phrase in the dialogue of a movie will set the stage for the entire story. The question of trust - who is worthy of Joe’s trust, who isn’t, whom he can convince to trust him, and how Joe’s life will depend on his correct assessment of the trustworthiness of others - guides the action in this spy drama.
Joe works for the Central Intelligence Agency of the US government, the CIA. He and his colleagues read books, books published around the world, to determine if their plots imitate any CIA plans or operations, indicating a breach of secrets. In the morning pouch from NY Center a reply arrives stating that there is nothing to support Joe’s theory about the mystery book he has read and analyzed.
Undetected by the front-door observer, Joe slips out the back door against regulations to pick up lunch. In his absence three men enter the building and gun down all his coworkers.
When Joe, code name Condor, returns and discovers the bodies, including his girlfriend‘s, he grabs the handgun from the front desk and runs. From a sidewalk pay phone Joe calls the center begging to be brought in from the cold.
Told by Higgins, Deputy Director of the NY Center, to meet Wicks, Joe’s section chief, in an alley, he becomes suspicious. Can he trust these men, neither of whom he has met?
Wicks brings along a friend of Joe‘s, surmising that the face of a person Joe trusts will put him at ease. But things go awry. Joe runs again.
He needs a safe place, time to think. Joe kidnaps a woman, Kathy (Faye Dunaway), and forces her to drive to her apartment. Why should she believe his story? Will there come a time when she trusts him enough to help him?
At a clandestine meeting with Higgins, Joe presents his theory of what he suspects is the existence of a mysterious network within the CIA. Can Joe look at Higgins face and ascertain how important his safety is to Higgins in relation to Higgins’s duty of restraining the mysterious network…if that is his desire?
With the assassins on his trail, Joe must identify the killers and the secret network organizer to Higgins in hopes that he will use the information to help Joe to safety.
Meanwhile, Kathy is long overdue to meet her boyfriend. Can Joe trust that she will give him the time he needs before telling anyone of her tumultuous experience?
Joe conspires to expose the secret network‘s diabolical plot, thereby rendering it inoperable and securing his future safety. The printed word placed Joe in the middle of this catastrophe. Can the printed word free him from it? Will the plot be exposed? Will Joe live long enough to see it exposed? What is the likelihood that his idea will foil the plot?
Joe and Kathy’s encounter introduces an alternative to the dilemma of trust. When he saw her work, the photos of empty scenes taken in late fall, he sensed her aversion to emotional commitment. He accused her of preferring a fling with a man who was temporarily available.
Did Joe use that insight to get what he needed from her? The scene at the railroad station gives clues to their feeling for one another.
In the last scene with the assassin, the killer presents his viewpoint on emotional and intellectual involvement and suggests an extreme solution to the dilemma of trust and the foreboding of diabolical plots contrived by mysterious networks. Does Joe consider his safety worth the price of such a solution?
This 1975 spy movie relies more on intrigue and perplexing nuances than action-packed scenes and speed chases. The tension remains steady throughout the film with one line that invokes laughter by the audience, if not the characters. Listen for it half way through the movie.
Three Days of the Condor was adapted from the novel Six Days of the Condor by James Grady. The film was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Film Editing.