Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) is a CIA analyst who works in an obscure office in Washington D.C., part of a research group that spitballs unlikely what-if scenarios that are then squirreled away in the agency’s vast archives. It’s a job he find less than fulfilling. But one day, Turner goes out to pick up lunch for his co-workers, and returns to discover that they have all been murdered — and that he himself is the chief suspect. The entire CIA has been tasked with hunting him down, and they’ve put a surprisingly likeable contract assassin (Max Von Sydow) on his trail as well.
In order to evade detection, he kidnaps a woman at random (Faye Dunaway) — who quickly becomes his ally — and hatches a daring plot to blow the lid off the conspiracy he’s stumbled onto. One of the best thrillers of the 1970s, Three Days of the Condor is a smart and well-paced action film that blends Hitchcockian suspense with post-Watergate anti-government paranoia. –Michael Popham
Three Days of the Condor screens Monday and Tuesday, February 23 and 24, at 7:00 and 9:15 at the Trylon. You can purchase advance tickets here.