Based on James Grady’s novel, Condor is an efficient exercise in Watergate-era paranoia. Robert Redford plays Joseph Turner, a low-level CIA researcher who returns to the office with lunch one day to find every one of his colleagues murdered. His panic only grows after the CIA agents ordered to bring him in instead try to kill him. Director Sydney Pollack made star vehicles – he showcased the actors’ personalities rather than his own – and so Condor rides entirely on Redford. He’s elegantly disheveled here, believably out of his element yet never quite clumsy. More often than not, he uses his quick wits to outthink the tougher, better-trained spies on his trail. Less elegant is the movie’s insertion of a love interest, a photographer played by a dazzling but wasted Faye Dunaway. Turner literally kidnaps the photographer off the street in order to hide out at her house, and Pollack’s use of her character is equally abrupt. His handling of familiar Hollywood tropes is usually much smoother. Still, as a thriller Condor hits all the right beats. The movie’s only Oscar nomination was for editing, which is an appropriate reflection of what the picture does best. As we jump back and forth between Turner and his pursuers and the various ways they keep track of each other, each scene clicks right into place.
