Just watched "3 Days of the Condor" again

[ybbor]

Classic Robert Redford film from the '70s, where he is a peripheral player in the CIA.

40 years after the fact and it was quite prophetic.

It's on Netflix now, check it out if you can. It is still entertaining.

[salib]

1. Excellent movie, along with All the President's Men and Marathon Man

[ybbor]

3. Yes, the scene at the end outside the NYT...

Always makes me think of All the President's Men.

[villager]

2. Quite startling how prescient that film was

I've seen it a few times over the last several years, since my eldest son is a fan of it, and we used to watch on a recurring basis, for awhile, at a friend's house....

Until that cycle of viewings commenced, though, I hadn't seen it since the 70's, either...

[brooklynite]

4. In the opening scene, the killer is standing in front of my parent's apartment

[ybbor]

5. No way!

Did they get a good ID on him?

[BlueMTexpat]

6. The film halved the number of days.

It was based on the novel Six Days of the Condor. It's a fun read. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/six-days-of-the-condor-james-grady/1000967253?ean=9781453229231

For those who enjoyed the first, there are other "Condor" novels as well.

[ybbor]

9. I'll have to give it a read

If I like the movie this much I'm sure I'll love the book.

[BlueMTexpat]

18. Being paid to read mystery novels

is what I would describe as an ideal job!

[Action_Patrol]

7. Perfect movie

It was clear the Russo Brothers were heavily influenced on this when crafting Captain America: the winter soldier

[kiva]

8. Great movie.

It does stand up to time very well.

[Cleita]

10. For old movies that are prophetic about our government undercover operations,

check out "The Falcon and the Snowman" about our budding electronic snoop operations. A sort of prequel to Manning, Snowden, et al.

[ybbor]

12. It's funny you bring up that movie

While I was scanning the movies Bad Boys came up, but not the Sean Penn version, which I prefer. And it made me think of Falcon and the Snowman which came out about the same time, early Sean Penn, and I was thinking about how great that movie was.

Yes it also has that shady underbelly of our government at its worst.

[Nay]

11. I've seen this film in the last year, and you know what struck me? How truly FREE a person

could be in the 70's. Look around when you watch the movie -- no cameras mounted anywhere, no one with cell phones clapped to their ears, no dash cams, no TV screens everywhere, none of that shit. You could walk down the sidewalk and never even be recognized.

I was alive at that time and watching that movie made me realize how penned in we are today. There's simply no comparison. It makes me weep.

[ybbor]

13. I was thinking the same thing

That he could be anonymous for three days would never happen today.

The idea that it took until the morning for them to get to "Kathy's" apartment would be minutes today.

Also how he was able to just walk into NY Bell and get into the room unnoticed would never happen today. I know it is a movie, but things were more lax then.

[MinM]

14. Richard Helms was an advisor on the film ..

Soon to be a television programme ..

‘Three Days of the Condor’ to Be Remade for TV

Posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2015 by Russ Fischer

"When someone mentions “paranoid ’70s thrillers” as an inspirational set of films, one of the movies they’re talking about is Three Days of the Condor. (Anthony and Joe Russo, for example, namechecked it often in the runup to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.)

Sydney Pollack’s original film featured Robert Redford as a low-level CIA analyst whose entire office cohort is murdered while he’s out at lunch; he spends the rest of the film eluding his own death while trying to figure out what’s going on. And now David Ellison’s Skydance Productions, which backs the Mission: Impossible and new Star Trek films, is developing a Three Days of the Condor remake for TV...

http://www.slashfilm.com/three-days-of-the-condor-remake/

[Octafish]

21. In June 2001, the Ambassador's niece played a stirring role in history to come.

The Accidental Operative

Richard Helms’s Afghani Niece Leads Corps of Taliban Reps

By Camelia Fard & James Ridgeway
Village Voice, Tuesday, Jun 12 2001

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 6—On this muggy afternoon, a group of neatly attired men and a handful of women gather in a conference room at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. The guest list includes officials from the furthest corners of the world—Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and Turkey—and reps from the World Bank, the Uzbekistan chamber of commerce, the oil industry, and the Russian news agency Tass, along with various individuals identified only as "U.S. Government," which in times past was code for spook.

At hand is a low-profile briefing on international narcotics by a top State Department official, who has recently returned from a United Nations trip to inspect the poppy fields of Afghanistan, source of 80 percent of the world's opium and target of a recent eradication campaign by the fundamentalist Taliban. The lecture begins as every other in Washington: The speaker politely informs the crowd he has nothing to do with policymaking. And, by the way, it's all off the record.

Lecture over, the chairman asks for questions. One man after another rises to describe his own observations while in the foreign service. The moderator pauses, looks to the back of the room, and says in a scarcely audible voice: "Laili Helms." The room goes silent.

For the people gathered here, the name brings back memories of Richard Helms, director of the CIA during the tumultuous 1960s, the era of Cuba and Vietnam. After he was accused of destroying most of the agency's secret documents detailing its own crimes, Helms left the CIA and became President Ford's ambassador to Iran. There, he trained the repressive secret police, inadvertently sparking the revolution that soon toppled his friend the Shah.

Laili Helms, his niece by marriage, is an operative, too—but of a different kind. This pleasant young woman who makes her home in New Jersey is the Taliban rulers' unofficial ambassador in the U.S., and their most active and best-known advocate elsewhere in the West. As such she not only defends but promotes a severe regime that has given the White House fits for the past six years—by throwing women out of jobs and schools, stoning adulterers, forcing Hindus to wear an identifying yellow patch, and smashing ancient Buddha statues.

SNIP...

She stands at the public relations hub of a ragtag network of amateur Taliban advocates in the U.S. At the University of Southern California, economics professor Nake M. Kamrany arranged last year for the Taliban's Rahmatullah Hashami, ambassador at large, to bypass the visa block. He even rounded up enough money for Hashami to lecture at the University of California, both in Los Angeles and Berkeley. The trip ended at the State Department in D.C., with a reported offer to turn Osama bin Laden over to the U.S.

CONTINUED...

http://www.villagevoice.com/2001-06-12/news/the-accidental-operative/full/

PS: That photo from the set looks like the Ambassador is happy with the way things are going with the, ah, shoot.

[Joe Turner]

15. One of my favorite movies of all time

Yes, it was way ahead of its time in exposing the octopus tentacles of the military industrial complex which has become the implacable power of today.

[Fan]

16. wait there's more!

[link:http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/03/24/foxhole-james-grady-on-condor-return-competing-with-robert-redford-and/|

The author of Six Days of the Condor (basis for the movie) has just written a 40 years later update on the story's hero titled Last Days of the Condor.

Like “Six Days,” this is essentially a chase novel, with the Condor again running from sinister forces within our government, but much else has changed. Though still not to be trusted, the government has evolved from the Watergate era to the present age of the national-security state. Grady’s talent has evolved, too. “Six Days” offered a fine, understated narrative, but now, after long experience with novels and screenplays, his style is far more loose, colorful, challenging and fun. Reading the novel, I sometimes thought of Orwell’s novel “1984,” sometimes of the Dylan song “Desolation Row.” Washington Post

[CTyankee]

17. It also had one of the sexiest love scenes I've ever seen (the uncut version)...

It was stunning. Faye Dunaway and Robert Redford...oh, my...

[riderinthestorm]

19. I'm always stunned at the end when they debate whether the NYT will publish it

sooooo prescient.

Even then the MSM was suspected of being "bought" by the government.

Love this movie.

[PCIntern]

20. Also "The Anderson Tapes"

wherein Sean Connery gets out of jail after a long stretch and doesn't realize that nearly everyone with whom he is associated or becomes associated is wiretapped, spied upon, or filmed. Great movie…great plot and twists...

[Baitball Blogger]

22. The last scene was prophetic.

I think it was the Rolling Stones magazine that he sent the papers to. But the prophetic statement was, how can you be so sure that they'll print the information.

That is the end game. We need to accept that our newspapers are bought.

Thank God we have the internet.

[MinM]

23. Coming Soon: Ed Snowden the Movie; and Robert Redford as Dan Rather

The '70s were the Golden Era for political thrillers (All the President's Men, Parallax View, The Conversation, Executive Action, Twilight's Last Gleaming, The China Syndrome...).

There are a couple of upcoming movies in that genre to watch for ..

First a movie about Ed Snowden .. Snowden starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley and Timothy Olyphant.

Also one about Dan Rather and the kerfuffle surrounding the 60 Minutes piece on Dubya (Truth). It just so happens to star the star of 3 Days of the Condor (and All the President's Men .. Robert Redford) as Dan Rather.

Should be interesting.

[ybbor]

24. Sweet

As someone who rarely goes to the movies, I can see myself checking at least one of these out on the big screen.