Endangered Species: 'Three Days of the Condor'

"You people think that not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?"

I titled this piece 'Endangered Species' because of the rarity of real, or should I say "real" (it's the movies after all) political thrillers that reflect society at large today.

The '70s seemed to be full of them: The Conversation, All the President's Men, The Parallax View, just to name a few. Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor can be added to the list. Released dead center of the '70s, after the end of Nixon /Watergate and Vietnam, Condor has the same paranoid, don't trust the government, conspiracy vibe as some of the best of this decade.

Robert Redford stars as Joe Turner, a low-level CIA researcher in NYC (code name: Condor) who comes back to his office after lunch to find that all his co-workers have been shot dead. He immediately escapes the office and is on the lam from mysterious assassins trying to kill him as well.

While on the run, Redford encounters Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway) in a shop and forces her to provide him a hiding place in her apartment. During his short stay, they instantly fall in love. It's a bit of a silly plot point but with Redford and Dunaway in their beautiful primes, maybe it's believable?

An assassin (the always fantastic Max Von Sydow) is out on a CIA "clean-up" contract to kill Turner and protect info on a covert/rogue CIA operation to take over big oil in the Middle East. I won't go into the details here about the nefarious plot twists to silence the rogue plan but suffice to say it's all very believable 42 years later that the same thing could happen today.

I might semi-spoil the ending but suffice to say "going to the New York Times to leak the overarching CIA plot" may not be the happy ending that Turner is hoping for. It was the '70s and some of these new Hollywood films loved a freeze-framed, downer ending.

In 1975 when "news" meant newspapers, magazines, and three network TV channels and cynicism and distrusting the media was a bit less robust. But debunking lies and "fake news" conspiracies is racing back into the public eye in America, and with good reason.

Just in time for me to say this movie deserves a great reboot to modernize the storyline but still keep the paranoid tension and distrust that is the movie's core, there is a remake filming this spring in Toronto for a ten-episode TV series.

Looking at the news, real and fake, I'm sure the writers have all the inspiration they need.

The "Quaint Charm" of Watergate: 'All the President's Men'

Remember when a national political disgrace brought down a president? No, not 2017...at least not yet. It was 1974 and the "Watergate Scandal" led to the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon right before his impeachment process was set to begin.

The third film in the loosely-assembled "'70s Paranoia Trilogy" of director Alan Pakula, All the President's Men was both an award-winning film and a box-office smash. People wanted their schadenfreude on the big screen and this movie gave it to them. There hasn't been a truly great investigative journalism movie after President's until maybe, 2015's Oscar-winning Spotlight.

Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, in both their '70s rumpled handsome glory, play Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who are the masterminds behind uncovering the truth about the Watergate burglary/wiretapping of the DNC offices, and its connection to the CIA and Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (with that wonderfully accurate acronym of CREEP).

A main source of information to Woodward and Bernstein is "Deep Throat," an anonymous senior government official who will meet with them in person only under cover of night in an empty parking garage. "Follow the money" is Mr. Throat's main message.

Where does it lead? To the Chief of Staff and the U.S. intelligence community, of course. As Nixon is sworn in for his second term in January, 1973, Woodward and Bernstein are writing their Post expose that breaks the whole case wide open.

As we just passed the 40th anniversary of this film last year, we can compare and contrast our current political situation. The attempt to break into the opposing team's information stronghold is reflected in the Russian hacks this past summer on the DNC. But the foiled burglary and wiretaps of Watergate seem bumbling and quaint now in the face of a Trump/Orwellian manipulation of facts, hacking enabling, media silencing, strong-arming, and general despot-isms.

Where are our Woodward and Bernstein today? Our Deep Throat? Our All the President's Men?