Robert Redford: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

5 Awesome Performances...

5. Joe Turner - Three Days Of The Condor (1975)

Directors often form a bond with a particular actor which leads them to work on numerous films together. Think of Ridley Scott teaming up with Russell Crowe, or Martin Scorsese's work with Robert De Niro and more recently Leonardo DiCaprio. One of the more underrated director-actor pairings is Redford and Sydney Pollack, who collaborated seven times betwen 1967 and 1990. We begin our countdown with Three Days of the Condor, perhaps their most enjoyable collaboration.

Three Days of the Condor is a taut political thriller based on the novel Six Days of the Condor by James Brady. It follows low-level CIA operative Joe Turner (Redford), who spends his days looking for hidden messages in novels, newspapers and magazines. Having made a report to his superiors about a thriller novel with several peculiar plot details, Turner returns to his office to find that his six colleagues have all been murdered. What follows is a tense game of cat-and-mouse as Turner (codename Condor) goes on the run and the CIA attempt to track him down.

Three Days of the Condor remains a well-made, twisty thriller, whose commentary on secrecy and the politics of oil still resonates today. Pollack directs with pace and dexterity, and Redford is very convincing as an agent who is out of his depth and fighting for his life. Notwithstanding the more action-packed sections of the plot, it's easy to view this performance as a trial run for his subsequent role in All The President's Men. In any case, it's a very good place to start our countdown.