Don’t crucify me. I’m not going to take the popular route this week.
You see, there are so many titles of worth hitting shelves today. You’ll find Amazon links to most of them below. But they’re films you probably know about. They’re movies that you’ll pick up without a recommendation. T2, Batman, A Bug’s Life…You’re no doubt intimately familiar with all of them at this point. I thought I’d throw the spotlight on a film that’s a bit older, far from perfect but one of my all time favourites:
PICK OF THE WEEK FOR MAY 19 – THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR
It’s been almost a year since the great Sydney Pollack passed on. Probably best known for his award winning films, Out Of Africa and Tootsie, Pollack was more than just a talented director. He was also an actor and good, close friend of Robert Redford. After sharing the screen in the 1962 film War Hunt, the two men would go on to make six more films together, not least of which is Three Days of the Condor, available now on Blu-ray.
This is one of those claustrophobic seventies conspiracy thrillers, like Coppola‘s The Conversation and Pakula‘s All the President’s Men that played on the cultural paranoia of the time, as audiences found themselves still recovering from losing trust in government through the Watergate scandal and Vietnam. The amazing thing is (read: not so amazing) that these taught political thrillers play just as well today as they did thirty years ago! And Condor is no exception.
Robert Redford plays Condor, CIA reader Joe Turner who finds himself on the run when his entire office is massacred. After a call for help to headquarters in Langley, he quickly discovers that his own people are out to get him. With nowhere to turn, he kidnaps innocent photographer Kathy Hale, played by Faye Dunaway who he eventually seduces into helping him. Condor comes face to face with Ming the Merciless himself – Max Von Sydow – ruthless hitman for hire as he races to unravel a web of secrets that some people would kill to keep.
Considering the age of Three Days of the Condor, it really looks quite good on this Blu-ray disc from Paramount. It hasn’t been given the platinum restoration treatment reserved for classics and hollywood eye-candy but it sports a nice honest, film-like transfer with accurate colours, solid blacks and just enough grain to make me happy. I’m sure cinematographer Owen Roizman would approve.
While I’m impressed with the film-to-video transfer I can’t say that I was blown away by the flat, thin audio on the disc. It’s serviceable but far from thrilling. Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise as Condor features one of the worst musical scores ever set to film! That’s not to say that Dave Grusin‘s smooth jazz is a work of profound incompetence, simply inappropriate and dated. Okay…maybe it’s just a lot suckier than it should have been, I admit it. Bad music.
What about the special features, you say? Um…how does a trailer grab ya? It would’ve been nice to see a retrospective or listen to commentary track but to be honest, I feel privileged to just have a chance to see this film in 1080p high-def. I’ll do without the extras if I must…
3 Days of the Condor is available for $19.99 on Amazon.com – 33% off the MSRP of $29.99
ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray:
