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Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor (1975), in which Robert Redford stars as a CIA agent on the run from a mass slaughter in his CIA research office, is one of my favorite films of all time.

*** SPOILER ALERT! ***

I especially like the final scene, which gets more and more haunting as the years merge celluloid with reality. To think the truth about the Iraq War was on the silver screen in front of the whole wide world over thirty years ago!

It’s almost as spooky as The Lone Gunmen pilot, which prophetically depicted a government plot to crash a hijacked Boeing into the WTC towers.

Speaking of the WTC, the spanking new twin towers, in all their filled-to-the-brim-with-space-age-asbestos wonder, are featured so prominently and so often in Three Days of the Condor that they’re practically a character in the film.

The First Cheney/Rumsfeld Era

It sends me down the rabbit hole to ponder the era when this film was released: Dick Cheney was Chief of Staff to President Ford. Donald Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense. They were both about to successfully push out Colby and push in George H. W. Bush as Director of the CIA.

Heck, even back then, Cheney and Rumsfeld were both fighting to use wiretaps without a warrant and chumming around with Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. It’s almost a given that the neocon crew already had their cold, slimy eyes on Iraq.

Art Imitating Life?

Robert Redford So, was Three Days of the Condor cinematic art imitating behind-the-scenes CIA life? Or did Cheney and Rumsfeld see the movie and think, like Higgins, that invading the Middle East really could work?

Whatever the case, not only does the following scene depict an exposed plan to invade the Middle East for oil; the final words depict a future in which the CIA may even have the New York Times under its thumb — something inconceivable then, but almost certain after Judith Miller showed her true colors…

From the script:

TURNER
Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?

HIGGINS
Are you crazy?

TURNER
Am l?

HIGGINS
Look, Turner…

TURNER
Do we have plans?

HIGGINS
No. Absolutely not.
(then)
We have games. That’s all. We play games. “What if?”, “How many men?”, “What would it take?”, “Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime?”
(quieter)
That’s what we’re paid to do.

TURNER
So…Atwood just took the games too seriously. He was really going to do it…wasn’t he?
.
.
.
HIGGINS
The fact is, it wasn’t a bad plan. It could’ve worked.

TURNER
Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie
is the same thing as telling the truth?

HIGGINS
It’s simple economics, Turner. Today it’s oil. In 10 or 15 years it’ll be food, or plutonium. Maybe sooner than that. What do you think the people will want us to do then?

TURNER
Ask them!

HIGGINS
Not now. Then.

Ask them when they’re running out. Ask them when there’s no heat and they’re cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry.

Want to know something? They won’t want us to ask them. They’ll want us to get it for them.

TURNER
Boy, have you found a home.
(then)
There were seven people killed, Higgins.

HIGGINS
The company didn’t order it. Atwood did.

TURNER
Atwood did. And who the hell is Atwood! He’s you. He’s all you guys. Seven people killed, and you play games!

HIGGINS
Right. And the other side does, too. That’s why we can’t let you stay outside.

TURNER
Well, go on home, Higgins. Go on. They’ve got it.

HIGGINS
What?

TURNER
You know where we are. Just look around. They’ve got it. That’s where they ship from. They’ve got all of it.

Higgins’ head darts up and he reads the legend above Turner’s head. THE NEW YORK TIMES. He is stunned.

HIGGINS
What? What did you do?

TURNER
I told them a story. You play games, I told them a story.

HIGGINS
Oh, you — You poor, dumb son of a bitch. You’ve done more damage than you know.

TURNER
I hope so.
.
.
.
HIGGINS
How do you know they’ll print it? You can take a walk, but how far if they don’t print it?

TURNER
They’ll print it.

HIGGINS
How do you know?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Art & Culture, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

14 Responses to “Three Days of the Condor”

The Holywriter says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 8:27 am

I really want to see that now.

Reply
Xman says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 9:01 am

A lot of people bad mouth Redford, but the guy has made a lot of films that really say something. Additionally, he has incubated several generations of new film makers in the hope that they will get the message out and hopefully turn some things around.

I saw this film when it first came out and I got chills. I guess it’s time to put it in my Netflix queue. Maybe if we are lucky, there will be
extras” on the DVD and we can learn about motivations…

Reply
pelmo says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 9:15 am

Dick and George get to play with spies and soldiers. The only problem is they are real and not the tin soldiers we played with as kids. So when someone dies in their games, it’s for real.

Reply
JoeC says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 9:47 am

I got the DVD a couple of years ago and only have two things to whine about: 1) Hardly any extra features…I’d like at least a “making of” documentary and a separate dialogue track with director/actor commentary. 2) The soundtrack has that funky 1970s action/spy boinky music running in the background through some scenes…that REALLY dates the movie. Otherwise, it IS strange to see so much unemotionally-presented footage of the twin towers amidst so many references to oil, Middle East invasion, and the New York Times from a movie made 30 years ago. Just goes to show, we haven’t really come that far since Watergate and the 1974 energy crisis…

Reply
Xman says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 12:21 pm

The writers website is pretty interesting: http://www.jamesgrady.net
He wrote the book at age 24 in Montana.

Reply
La Sirena says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 1:08 pm

The kid and I watched Bobby last night. His favorite game is the “what if…” game, so we played “what if Bobby Kennedy hadn’t been assisnated?….no Cheney and Rumsfeld cutting their teeth in a Nixon White House, perhaps?

I’ve never seen this movie. Thanks for pointing it out. I’m planning to queue it up, as well.

Reply
La Sirena says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 1:10 pm

Oooops! I meant “assasinated”, NOT “assisnated”. That sounds like something else entirely.

Reply
Larry says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 1:48 pm

If you notice life and art do intermingle before and right now. Not a pleasant thought.

Reply
JoeC says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 3:32 pm

How is Bobby? I’ve almost watched it a few times, but keep putting it off, I guess because I think I know how it ends (even though I probably don’t…) Is it worth putting on the watch list?

Reply
Suzie-Q says:

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 4:55 pm

Redford was and still is a great actor! He has made some incredible movies! ;)

Reply
La Sirena says:

Monday, July 9, 2007 at 1:24 pm

Bobby is definitely worht putting on the watch list. I found it a little scmaltzy here and there, but it was interesting and very well-acted. You don’t really see Bobby himself, it’s about other people in the hotel in the 24 hours prior to his assasination. And it did make us think — at least about the repurcussions of the incident.

It was an Emilio Estevez project.

Reply
Xman says:

Saturday, July 21, 2007 at 8:44 am

Just got back from a few days in the Redwoods (where life was simple and my nervous cough stopped) and watched my Netflix version of “Condor” last night. Yep, opening music is very shaft/superfly goofy, but after a slow and badly acted few minutes, it really rolls.
Highly recommended.

Reply
Lyra says:

Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 8:06 pm

Thanks for posting this dialogue! It helped me out on an essay I’m writing.

Reply
JoeC says:

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 5:39 am

You’re welcome! Still one of my favorite movies, even with the now-dated 70’s soundtrack, and the whole WTC/Middle East Oil presence saturating the film is very ominous in retrospect.

Reply

Three Days of the Condor

The First Cheney/Rumsfeld Era

Art Imitating Life?

14 Responses to “Three Days of the Condor”

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