Three Days of the Condor, dir. Sydney Pollack

Zero and Wiz RECOMMEND Three Days of the Condor Sometimes you watch a movie and you just enjoy it even though there are glaring issues with the finished product. This was my exact feeling finishing Three Days of the Condor, Sydney Pollack's paranoia thriller about a CIA reader (Robert Redford) who comes back from lunch finding his entire team assassinated. The movie is actually entertaining: it's a twisty thriller that makes you wonder whether the main character will make it out alive. The plot goes along at a decent clip hitting beats of the plot and providing new information as the film moves forward. The mystery aspects, along with the governmental spook plotline, makes it enjoyable...though I can't really say I was excited or enthralled by what I was watching. As for performances, Max von Sydow's quiet and clever performance as a freelance assassin. He plays him as elusive, somewhat creepy and seasoned and Sydow is easily the most interesting of the characters in the film. But there was one element of the film that made me almost not recommend it and that's everything to do with the character played by Faye Dunaway. Essentially, Dunaway plays a character that is kidnapped by the main character, tied up and gagged at some point...then becomes romantically interested in him soon after. It's actually rather appalling to watch one minute where she is scared and was tied up in the bathroom with him barking orders....only to then minutes later be in a sex scene that is portrayed as loving and romantic with a soft camera look. And then...for some god awful reason....she decides to help him! Maybe this is me injecting "modern values" in a film but it seems incredibly strange that someone who was terrified for her life one day...is falling for her captor the next day. And before you ask, the film isn't that deep to be portraying her as someone going through Stockholm Syndrome. Here's the thing though: if you are able to just turn your brain off and just enjoy the spy plotline, Three Days of the Condor is a decently entertaining film. It's just odd to watch a film that deals with its espionage elements somewhat intelligently only to completely blunder with a key character.