Three Days of the Condor

By VARIETY STAFF

Paramount. Director Sydney Pollack; Producer Stanley Schneider; Screenplay Lorenzo Semple Jr, David Rayfiel; Camera Owen Rolgman; Editor Fredric Steinkamp, Don Guidice; Music Dave Grusin; Art Director Stephen Grimes
 
Robert Redford
Faye Dunaway
Cliff Robertson
Max von Sydow
John Houseman
Addison Powell
 

James Grady's book, Six Days of the Condor, underwent a time-compression title change in this adaptation by Lorenzo Semple Jr and David Rayfiel. Robert Redford, working in a CIA front, discovers all his associates massacred. He runs, pants, thinks, schemes, evades and ultimately exposes an agency insider who has been plotting on the side, so to spek. Disenchanted with the world as he wants it, Redford walks into a newspaper to expose the whole thing.

The film is a perfect contemporary example of an old studio formula approach to filmmaking. Basically a B, it has been elevated in form - but not in substance - via four bigger names, location shooting and more production values. Sometimes the trick works, but not here.

1975: Nomination: Best Editing

(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1975. Running time: 117 MIN.