James Grady’s book, Six Days of the Condor, underwent a time-compression title change in this adaptation by Lorenzo Semple Jr and David Rayfiel. Robert Redford, working in a CIA front, discovers all his associates massacred. He runs, pants, thinks, schemes, evades and ultimately exposes an agency insider who has been plotting on the side, so to spek. Disenchanted with the world as he wants it, Redford walks into a newspaper to expose the whole thing.
The film is a perfect contemporary example of an old studio formula approach to filmmaking. Basically a B, it has been elevated in form – but not in substance – via four bigger names, location shooting and more production values. Sometimes the trick works, but not here.
1975: Nomination: Best Editing
