Down in Front™ goes totally RETRO with a review of a really old movie! 1975's Three Days of the Condor, starring wart-ridden heartthrob Robert Redford and beautiful Faye Dunaway, star of every single movie made in the Seventies! This post-Watergate spy thriller captured the country's imagination by feeding the flames of its quaint, childlike protoparanoia! You know, the paranoia that makes you feel that maybe, just maybe the government might not have pure intentions! Hilarious! Watch as Redford, a bookish (occasionally bespectacled) government employee, slowly uncovers a deep dark secret: the United States government killed seven (that's right, SEVEN) people, and for what? Oil! Can you imagine such a thing? That our government would kill SO FEW people for oil? But enough about unquenched bloodlust! What about ordinary every-day lust? The Seventies was really the last decade where the hero of a movie could rape his way into the heart of the heroine (I'm looking at you, Clint!) so Redford merely abducts the comely Dunaway at gunpoint, leaves her tied to a toilet for hours, and allows her to seduce him later that night! Cue the post-Watergate love montage filled with sad black and white photographs of abandoned playgrounds. Romance was never so scorching as when depicted by director Sydney Pollack! Who else is in it? The Exorcist, Spider-man's uncle, and the former spokesman for Smith-Barney! What a cast! But is it worth renting? It depends! Do you have a fetish for ungodly huge seventies automobiles? I do! Do you like chaste love montages and incredibly underwhelming conspiracies? I don't! Do you like anything remotely related to The Exorcist? I do! So, it's a mixed bag. Don't rent it. Wait for it to show up on Turner Classic Movies. When it does, don't watch it too hard. Make dinner or iron something with it on in the background. The music is groovy, anyway. That's all for now! Until next time, I'll see you Down In Front™!
