- "Maybe there's another CIA inside the CIA." That's idea enough to launch any 70's paranoid thriller, and it works wonders for Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor. The person pondering this troubling possibility is a researcher named Joe Turner (Robert Redford), although the Agency prefers that he go by the code name Condor. Simply put, Joe's job is to pore through mountains of printed material, both to look for new ideas and to make sure that the Agency's old ideas haven't been leaked to the public. As the film opens, Joe is focused on an obscure book that has been translated into a perplexing assortment of languages. The whole investigation looks like a dead end until Joe goes to lunch and comes back to find all of his colleagues murdered.
- As Joe acknowledges, the problem with all of this cloak-and-dagger stuff is that you just can't trust anyone. Maybe Deputy Director Higgins (Cliff Robertson) really does want to help bring him in safely, but Joe is sensibly reluctant to meet anyone he doesn't know. Eventually, Higgins convinces Joe to rendezvous with his section director, Wicks (Michael Kane), all under the watchful eye of Joe's old friend Sam (Walter McGinn). It only takes one gunfight in an alley to convince Joe that he was right not to trust anyone. Not the mailman (Hank Garrett) with the faulty pen, not the kindly older gentleman (Max Von Sydow) in the apartment elevator, and certainly not anybody claiming to be from the CIA. The only way to be sure of somebody's innocence is to choose them at random, and that's how Joe selects Kathy (Faye Dunaway).
- Kathy is a photographer busily preparing for a ski trip who has the bad fortune to run into Joe. I call it bad fortune because most people would not appreciate being kidnapped at gunpoint and tied up by a desperate CIA agent, but Kathy seems strangely into it. In fact, she must be experiencing a rather pronounced variation on Stockholm Syndrome since she transforms from reluctant hostage into willing accomplice and lover in what seems like a few hours. Personally, I always thought the term "Spyfucker" should be reserved for the title of the 50th James Bond movie, but this film feels the need to trot it out explicitly. Thankfully, all of the film's bad decisions are concentrated in this one character, and Faye Dunaway is a talented enough actress that Kathy hardly detracts from the rest of the film.
- That said, the film's most intriguing character is easily Joubert, that aforementioned older man in the elevator. It turns out that Joe is right to be suspicious since Joubert is in fact an Alsatian assassin hired to kill him. As portrayed so brilliantly by Von Sydow (who steals scenes even from Robert Redford), Joubert gives the impression of a philosopher and artist whose killings and figurine-painting alike reflect an overarching belief in his "own precision." In this sense, Joubert reflects the major theme of the film, which is a search for clarity in a government that thrives on secrecy. Higgins convinces himself that he's being patriotic by helping Americans secure the resources they'll need in the future. CIA administrator Wabash (John Houseman) pines for the clarity of the "Great War" when he presumably didn't need to kill off his own people. Joe's ultimate solution is to shine a much-needed light on all government shadows by telling "stories" to the New York Times. The film is admirably ambiguous on whether his efforts will pay off, but at least his actions place him squarely on the right side of an unwinnable secret war. A war that seems only to have grown more believable in the nearly forty years since this film was released.
