THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975) *** As a film, it's a prophetic political essay. Robert Redford was always ahead of the game politically, accumulating credibility until he cashed out by endorsing faux environmentalist (never saw a nuclear weapons system that he didn't want to test, never offered a suggestion as to how the waste could be cleaned up) Al Gore for President. Here he (Redford) spearheads a film postulating that the CIA as a dangerous organization without a moral compass, and one contaminating the other institutions around it. Even at the time this was hardly news to the highly educated and/or extremely left-wing, but it was close to heresy for mainstream America. Not necessarily the obvious step towards career advancement in popular art, it was a gutsy film to make (and timely it turned out, post-Watergate revelations about the CIA turned out to be even more spectacular than the "paranoid" script). Redford is very good as the "normal" guy who just happens to work for the CIA, squawking in an abstract manner all the way, but there are some holes in the plot (hitman tracks him down using license plate number, Redford continues using same vehicle throughout the film as everyone, including the same guy, struggle deperately to find him) and Sydney Pollack never manages to imbue the film with much more suspense or intrigue than a university lecture on the same subject matter. Faye Dunaway is as good as Redford, but they're both plagued by a ridiculous romantic sub-thread. "What if there's a CIA inside the CIA?" It was a good question for the time, the one now would be ("What if the most psychotic cadre is the inner circle of the CIA?" or maybe "Why is the most psychotic cadre the inner circle of the CIA?"). The closing frame of concern regarding the independence of the media (think October Surprise, think of the contrast between the way the media treated the same indiscretion on the part of corporate puppet Bill Clinton and authentic liberal Gary Hart, think of the time it took the Iran-Contra story to make it from independent to corporate press, think of the last thing you saw on FOX News) is as insightful as the concerns about the United States invading the Middle East "for oil."
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