Joseph Turner has a quiet, cushy job at the CIA, in one of their most gentlemanly branch-offices.
His job is to read. Just read and read. Comics, thrillers, magazines - chasing anything useful which might be fed into the CIA computers at head office. He might detect a security leak. Or be able to find coded messages to secret agents hidden in the comic strips in the New York Times. Or find drawings of Weapons of Mass Destruction. You know, the usual paranoiac stuff espionage agencies thrive on.
Everything's going fine until one wet day it's his turn to go out to get lunch for himself and his half dozen co-workers. Out he dashes, using a hidden back exit. He comes back laden down with bagels and pastrami, only there's no-one left to eat them. They've all been murdered. He has to scoff the lot himself, then scarper.
Joseph phones head office and arranges a meeting to be taken to safety. But when he arrives at the designated meeting point, his would-be CIA saviour turns out to be a Judas - Joseph finds he is now a prime CIA target himself.
And that's just in the first five minutes. Well, maybe it opens a little slower than that, but this elegantly constructed Cold War thriller does succeed in maintaining a fine edge of surprise and tension throughout, and its pacing is just perfect for the tale.
Joseph is played by Robert Redford in a very appropriate manner. He is plain doltish at first - a bit of a nerd in fact - and is overwhelmed by events. But he's pretty cluey underneath those Researcher's Official Issue Heavy-Duty glasses. And he shows some savvy when he selects to kidnap the very understanding Cathy (Faye Dunaway) to become an initially unwilling ally (later on she becomes unbelievably willing, but this is Hollywood after all) in his battle to stay alive and confound those at the CIA plotting his downfall.
Watch for Max Von Sydow in his appearance as a professional killer. He's every bit as professional as my favourite gun-for-hire, Luc Besson's Leon, but more articulate. And towards the end he delivers one of the flick's better speeches as he extols the virtues of his trade - 9-to-5 hours, and a great retirement plan. It's a class act.
Without giving too much away, it turns out that the events which unfold in the movie are all about oil, and about the unbelievable possibility that American might actually invade a Middle Eastern country just to safeguard those oil supplies for Western (predominantly American) consumption.
Yes, it's an unbelievable scenario. Well, it was in 1975. Pity about today. And without saying any more, I think the ending of this movie is even more appropriate today than it was back then. The day of the Condor has at last arrived...
This is an excellent anamorphic transfer of a period movie. There is the occasional sign of wear - the sudden scar or fleck - but these are strictly transitory and the film has strong deep colour tones and good contrast details.
Like most films of this period, a slightly more subdued palette is used than is usual in today's hyper-realistic movies. Once you adjust to yesterday's definition of reality, it's as fine as you could want it.
The soundtrack, originally in mono, is here presented in processed Dolby Digital 5.1 surround.
All that is really achieved is to spread the sound quite realistically across the front. There's no attempt at artificial stereo; it's a warm, quite rich soundtrack which does its job efficiently and with no fuss - just like Max Von Sydow, in fact.
