10 Conspiracy Movies That Will Make You Paranoid

8. Three Days Of The Condor

There is no star more synonymous with the conspiracy genre than Robert Redford. The actor, who would go on to star in Alan Pakula's adaptation of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's account of the Watergate affair in All the President's Men, starred in another of the genre's most iconic films in Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor, a film based on the Six Days of the Condor novel.

Released during the 'Year of Intelligence', a period which saw intense public scrutiny fall under the CIA and FBI, Three Days was very much a product of its time, reflective of those anxieties much like other thrillers of the period. It's no less resonant today however, with its story of CIA corruption, assassination and conspiracy ticking all the boxes when it comes to matching the genre's best efforts.

The film, along with other works of the period, even inspired 2014's seminal superhero thriller Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with Redford again returning to the genre he so stylishly entered four decades earlier as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The true strength of Three Days lies in how helpless it makes the audience feel; you truly get a sense for how Redford's character is battling against one of the most intricate and efficient intelligence apparatuses in the world, and, in light of the scandal that was then befalling America's own, Three Days' horror only hits closer to home.