Kino Lorber’s 3 Days of the Condor 4K is another ’70s conspiracy flick

Paramount Pictures

In this classic conspiracy thriller, screen icon Robert Redford stars as CIA Agent Joe Turner. Code name: Condor. When his entire office is massacred, Turner goes on the run from his enemies … and his so-called allies. After reporting the murders to his superiors, the organization wants to bring Condor in —- but somebody is trying to take him out. In his frantic hunt for answers, and in a desperate race for his life, Turner abducts photographer Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway), eventually seducing her into helping him. Every twist leads Condor to the end of his nerves … and will take you to the edge of your seat. And as he zeroes in on the staggering truth, he discovers there are some secrets people would kill to keep. Masterfully directed by Sydney Pollack and also starring Cliff Robertson, John Houseman and the icy Max von Sydow, 3 Days of the Condor endures as one of Hollywood’s finest tales of political paranoia.

REVIEW

In a Nixon and post-Nixon world, ’70s Hollywood was pumping out the films we know today as conspiracy thrillers. Movies about corrupt governments, distrust of The Man, and uncovering nefarious plots. You’d recognize many of the names: Klute, All the President’s Men, The Conversation, The Parallax View, and 3 Days of the Condor — now available on 4K from Kino Lorber.

Based on the novel Six Days of the Condor, director Sydney Pollack said, ‘That’s entirely too many days — I can do it in three.’ So the film covers three days in the life of Robert Redford as Joe Turner, a.k.a. Condor. He works for the C.I.A. reading books. He’s looking for clues, ideas, ciphers, whatever kinds of things that the C.I.A. would look for. Despite looking like Robert Redford, he’s really very nerdy.

One afternoon, he runs out to pick up sandwiches for the office. It’s raining, so he runs out the back door. Thank God he did that, because not two minutes later, trenchcoat-wearing big-gun-toting bad guys come through the front door and blow the whole office away. When he returns with the sandwiches, he doesn’t have much of an appetite after what he discovers.

Having never met the head of his department, he realizes he can’t trust anyone and spends the rest of the film on the run. You could definitely call it a conspiracy thriller, because he has to uncover the conspiracy behind this assassination. You could definitely call it a paranoid thriller, because he’s plenty paranoid. In either case, I would probably have an issue with using the word thriller, as it isn’t very thrilling. Even with the change from six days to three, he finds a lot of time to sit around and do nothing.

The craziest thing that he does, however, is decide that he should have … a hostage? I guess as like a literal human shield? So he kidnaps Faye Dunaway. Luckily for him, he looks like Robert Redford and she looks like Faye Dunaway, so it doesn’t take very long for either one of them to forget that she’s a hostage and instead just bang. It’s weird.

Paramount Pictures

She helps him run from Cliff Robertson (also a featured player in Kino’s recently released Malone) and Max von Sydow, who are both plenty creepy and keep up the suspense as much as possible.

The built-up climax is probably worth the price of admission (or Kino Lorber’s MSRP) alone, but it’s a headscratcher otherwise. It’s an action film devoid of action. It’s a high-speed film in no rush. Redford isn’t exactly book-ish, Dunaway isn’t that naive.

Those who already love the film are treated to a nice 4K disc, but those seeing it for the first time probably won’t place it on their ’70s Political Thriller Mt. Rushmore.

VIDEO

This 4K disc features a new HDR/Dolby Vision master from a 2023 4K scan of the original camera negative. Grain is clear with no obvious digital corrections. Colors are clear, darks are appropriately dark.

Cinematographer Owen Roizman shot The Exorcist, The French Connection, and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, so he knows gritty and that gritty photography plays well on the new disc — maybe even creating an ominous environment that mirrors the uncertainty of Redford’s situation.

AUDIO

Both the English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks are without issue. English subtitles are also available.

SPECIAL FEATURES

The 4K disc has two commentaries: an archival recording of director Pollack, and a new recording of critics Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson. The Blu features both commentaries, a 60 minute documentary called Something About Sydney Pollack and a 25-minute conversation with Redford about the film.