Three Days of the Condor (1975)

          While elitists often cite the collaboration of actor Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese as the prime example of a ’70s star/auteur mind-meld, it’s unwise to overlook a partnership that manifested in glossier movies—that of actor Robert Redford and filmmaker Sydney Pollack. While the films these men created together have never enjoyed the critical adoration of the De Niro-Scorsese pictures, the Redford-Pollack movies were, generally speaking, more popular with audiences and, in very different ways, just as thematically rich. Around the time De Niro and Scorsese were shooting their seminal psychological drama Taxi Driver, for instance, Redford and Pollack were enjoying the success of a slick escapist movie, Three Days of the Condor. Based on a novel by James Grady, and adapted for the screen by reliable popcorn-movie guy Lorenzo Semple Jr. and go-to Pollack rewriter David Rayfiel, Condor is a great yarn.

          Joseph Turner (Redford) is a CIA analyst whose days are spent reading books and documents for clues that might benefit the American intelligence community. Though he’s got the code name “Condor,” he’s not a covert operative. One day, Turner walks into his office and discovers that all of his co-workers have been assassinated. Someone in Turner’s unit uncovered top-secret data, so now Turner, as the unit’s only survivor, is a target. He spends the rest of the movie on the run, with ice-blooded European hit man Joubert (Max von Sydow) in pursuit. And since Turner isn’t sure he can trust his main CIA contact, Higgins (Cliff Robertson), he seeks refuge with a stranger, Kathy (Faye Dunaway). This being a Pollack movie, Kathy falls for Turner, so she gets pulled into his dangerous world even as Turner tries to unravel the conspiracy.

          As in most great thrillers, the mechanics of the plot are simultaneously crucial and disposable—we get enough detail to play along with Turner as he solves mysteries, but the actual information being pursued by characters within the story is inconsequential. The real fun comes from the moment-to-moment suspense of Turner trying to figure out whether people want to help or kill him. Aided by collaborators including master cinematographer Owen Roizman (The French Connection), Pollack does some of his best work here, keeping the story moving at a fast clip while still generating his signature romantic intensity. Redford plays to his strength of immaculately defining tiny shifts in mood and thought, his subtlety adding dimensions to the plot, and Dunaway is arguably warmer here than in any other movie. (Robertson, von Sydow and John Houseman are all entertaining, though their roles have fewer facets.) Exciting, sexy, and surprising, Three Days of the Condor is a great case study in how a well-matched actor and filmmaker can complement each other to produce highly enjoyable cinema.

Three Days of the Condor: RIGHT ON

Brass Target (1978)

          Crammed with big-name actors, colorful locations, and complex schemes, Brass Target should be a rousing thriller. Unfortunately, the team behind the picture tried to do too many things, and the starring role was unwisely given to John Cassavettes—who by this point in his career preferred directing low-budget films to acting in Hollywood flicks—so the combination of a confusing script and a phoned-in leading performance makes it difficult to appreciate the picture’s many admirable qualities. Set in 1945 Europe, just after the defeat of the Nazis, Brass Target begins with an exciting robbery: Mysterious criminals attack an Allied train and steal a fortune in Nazi gold. The theft divides Allied powers, because Russians blame Americans for the loss, so belligerent U.S. General George S. Patton (George Kennedy) vows to recover the gold and prove his country’s innocence. And then the movie veers off-course.

          Instead of focusing on Patton and the conspirators who want to impede his investigation, the picture shifts to an Amy detective, Major Joe De Lucca (Cassavettes), who digs into the robbery while dealing with myriad personal melodramas. Among other things, he’s got a fractious friendship with Col. Mike McCauley (Patrick McGoohan), a schemer who trades in stolen war loot, and both men love Mara (Sophia Loren), a European who survived the war by sleeping her way to safety. The movie’s plot gets even more complicated when the conspirators—primarily Col. Donald Rogers (Robert Vaughn) and Col. Walter Gilchrist (Edward Herrmann)—hire an enigmatic European assassin (Max Von Sydow) to kill Patton lest the general discover their crime.

          Any one of these storylines would have been enough for a satisfying movie, so Brass Target ends up giving each of its component elements short shrift. More damningly, the best scenes, which depict the assassin’s meticulous planning of an attempt on Patton’s life, feel like repeats of similar scenes in the acclaimed thriller The Day of the Jackal (1973). Nonetheless, Von Sydow gives the picture’s best performance, especially since the other acting in the movie is highly erratic.

          Cassavettes preens and scowls like some sort of irritable peacock; Loren looks lost, which is understandable seeing as how her character is anemically underdeveloped; Kennedy plays Patton as a foul-mouthed bully, his acting inevitably suffering by comparison to George C. Scott’s Oscar-winning turn in Patton (1970); and McGoohan is terrible, his accent shifting inexplicably from one line to the next. Still, Brass Target has tremendous production values, and the milieu of the story—postwar Europe as a lawless frontier—is fascinating. Plus, the central gimmick of the narrative, a conspiracy-theory explanation for the real Patton’s death in 1945, is imaginative. One suspects, however, that the premise was explored to stronger effect in the Frederick Nolan novel from which this film was adapted. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Brass Target: FUNKY