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One of the earliest and best of the paranoid thrillers
that dominated the 70’s, “Three Days of the Condor” emerged
in the shadow of Watergate and the deceptions associated
with the Vietnam War. Director Sydney Pollack always one
of Hollywood’s underrated directors and, yes, an auteur
who continuously challenged himself and his audiences by
tackling a wide variety of genres but staying true to the
themes that preoccupied him. By the way, the box says “3
Days of the Condor” while but that’s not the title—it’s
“Three Days of the Condor”. I suppose that Paramount thinks
that spelling it out would alienate teens . ***
Robert Redford plays an analyst with the CIA code named
“Condor” who accidently uncovers a conspiracy buried in
the books he’s reading. He isn’t aware that the “pattern”
that he reports to his superiors puts him at risk; when
he returns from lunch he finds everyone in his department
assassinated. Suddenly, “Condor” finds himself on the run
from his own agency unsure of who the “good guys” and “bad
guys” are. He ends up kidnapping a complete stranger (Faye
Dunaway) in a bid to escape an assassination attempt. ---
Image & Sound:
“Condor” looks very much of its time. Color films tended
to look grainer and the washed out look of the film is pretty
typical of the time. That said, Paramount has done a nice
job of transferring the film. Recently the studio released
a series of catalog titles using too much DNR and over processing
the image as if grain was a bad thing. It was an attempt
to make the film look smoother like more recent film stocks
or even digital video. The stock footage looks the worst
for wear but that’s not a surprise what matters is how the
footage shot for the film looks. Whomever did the DNR on
this did an exceptional job keeping the grain and textures
intact as much as possible for the Blu-ray format. ***
The box states that the soundtrack has been remixed
for Dolby TrueHD. It has been but it doesn’t do any great
service for the film. The film is primarily dialog driven
and while the remix has opened up the sound of the film
a bit it’s not a dramatic difference. ---
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