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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] 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.
[10] 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.
[12]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.
One has the impression of it being a question of perfect remakes, of extraordinary montages that emerge more from a combinatory culture (or McLuhanesque mosaic), of large photo-, kino-, historicosynthesis machines, etc., rather than one of veritable films.
"[13]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".
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.