20 Spy Movies You Must See Before You Die
14. Three Days Of The Condor (1975)
Three Days of the Condor is a very much a film rooted in its time period, that being the 1970s at the height of the Watergate scandal, and that's no bad thing. Robert Redford has given us some of the best performances to have graced the big screen, but his turn in Three Days of the Condor could be argued as his best work ever.
Redford plays Turner, a CIA operative whose job within the agency isn't all that important, which makes it more interesting when he's thrown into the harrowing situation at the core of the film. Upon returning to his place of work, Turner discovers that the rest of his team have been brutally murdered... and so begins a lethal game of cat and mouse, as this bewildered agent attempts to work out exactly why his friends were killed, and who is responsible for the act.
The movie, helmed by master Sydney Pollack, is a somewhat conventional take on the genre, but it's also proof that sometimes conventions are all you need.. Redford makes a great protagonist because he is a bag of juxtapositions; he's bookish, but look, he also drives a motorcycle!
Heck, the guy only avoids being killed at the start because it's his turn to fetch lunch... and he'll do anything - even take a bystander hostage - to learn the truth.