Streaming Pick (4/16/14)

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor is one of the all-time great paranoid thrillers. It tells the story of a CIA agent code-named Condor, played by Robert Redford. He works a mundane analyst's job in a mundane New York City office, in which a group of bored agents pore through books, newspapers, and magazines searching for hidden codes and meanings. It's a job built on paranoia - the notion that there are threats hidden everywhere, in everything. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't really after you.

Something happens to put Condor on the run from a killer. When he tries to seek help from the CIA, he starts to get the paranoid suspicion that the CIA is not exactly looking to rescue him from the person coming after him. And just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't really after you. I'm not going to get into many plot specifics beyond that. The movie's a classic - watch it.

Three Days of the Condor is a great, fun movie-watching experience, and Robert Redford is great as Condor. It has one of my favorite movie endings. The film also can't help but be a political experience. It's a film made in a time where there was deep, widely held cynicism about the United States government and the CIA (although this film was already being made when the CIA's infamous "Family Jewels" were publicly revealed). It's almost as if it just assumes that the audience will share it's distrust of the U.S. government and the sense that the government is hopelessly corrupt. 1975, ladies and gentlemen.

Nearly forty years later, such cynical sentiments in a major, big-budget Hollywood film seem rarer and rarer. Perhaps even somewhat verboten in an era when the big studios struggle and struggle to find any type of scenario where they can position the United States - and particularly the U.S. military - as the good guy. Even if it means the U.S. has to get invaded by nasty aliens a dozen times per summer.

While, as I said, the movie is enjoyable fun, it is remarkable just how politically relevant it is to today's audiences. The film is the story of government corruption and a reluctant whistle-blower forced to defend himself against CIA abuse and to go on the run to hide from a reckless government bent on protecting powerful military-industrial interests. If you can't see how that's highly relevant in today's United States, try paying attention.

Three Days of the Condor is currently available on Amazon Prime Instant (click on the picture above).