'3 Days of the Condor' - High-Def Digest Review

[Attebery]

Peter's review of '3 Days of the Condor' has been posted. He was hoping for a great 70's paranoid thriller, but says 'Condor' is awfully dull. This HD DVD import has pretty nice video, but the audio is a disappointment, and there's not a single extra. For fans only.

Full review here:
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/392/3...thecondor.html

[Feydaway]

I'm sorry...ummmmmmmmm...NO.

Condor is not dull. Give it another shot on a good night. It is miles better than Marathon Man (a movie I dig, but has problems...talk about convoluted!), stronger than Klute (another good film...but, more tone/mood than substance), and on par if not better than All the President's Men.

There is a reason it is THE iconic spy movie of the 70's. It is AWESOME. Forget about the conspiracy stuff (which is strong, but not the core of the film) and look at it as a 'man on the run' film a la the BEST man on the run film - NxNW. Condor is a great character - a CIA agent who is FAR from the Bourne's of the world. But, he uses what he has - his brains. And, he uses them well. Dunaway is powerful as the distant, bottled up urbanite who finds a connection (if only for a time) with this man. And Von Sydow is the ultimate cold, calculated assassin.

This is a movie, and a script that should (and is) be taught at film school. Top notch, and one of Pollack's best.

[mikvin]

this movie is awesome Peter M. Bracke!!!! i know its your opinion but i think you opinion on 3DaysoftheCondor is retarded. the movie is AWESOME...

i'm 26 and me and my buddies quote this movie and find it to be the definition of cool and the definitive spy movie. wish this was a blu-ray import

[parallax]

I totally agree with the others above, and love this thriller. Owned it for years on LaserDisc (widescreen), and will look forward to the eventual Blu-ray SpEd one day. Excellent acting, a nice movie-ending speech by Cliff Robertson, but ESPECIALLY the incredible memorable soundtrack by jazz legend Dave Grusin - how this powerful element was overlooked by the HDD reviewer is just a shame.

I also recommend (in this genre) The Parallax View, starring Warren Beatty (one of my earliest DVD purchases).

[Cochise]

Originally Posted by mikvin

this movie is awesome Peter M. Bracke!!!! i know its your opinion but i think you opinion on 3DaysoftheCondor is retarded. the movie is AWESOME...

i'm 26 and me and my buddies quote this movie and find it to be the definition of cool and the definitive spy movie. wish this was a blu-ray import

No need to be so negative. Enjoyment of a movie is always subjective to the individual viewer. I use reviewers' comments as a guideline, and form my own opinion. It's the reviews of PQ & AQ that are important to me here on HDD. The comments on the DTS-HD MA audio are disappointing.

I have this on it's way from Amazon.de (Germany) for only 9,22 Euros, so figured I couldn't go too wrong.

[krylonman]

Fixed subtitles? Lame. Hopefully someone finds an 'Underworld: Evolution'-type workaround.

[theHDphantom]

I have the German import HD DVD of this one (but it's the same disc/transfer). This movie's great. It was the first time I had seen this one too. I enjoyed it very much so.
The video's okay. It's a VERY clean print, but sometimes the video can look TOO soft.
The audio's quite nice too. Everything is clear and distinguishable. This here audio for an 'older' film like this gets my approval.
It does suck that you can't turn off the subtitle options, but at least you can change the size/position of the subtitles, so it's really not a bother for me.

My final grades:
Movie: 4.5 outta 5
Video: 3.5 outta 5
Audio: 3.5 outta 5

[Guns4Hire]

This is the only reason I havent bought this title. I LOVE this movie. But forced subtitles annoy me to no end.

[Centauri]

Didn't Peter give American Gangster a shitty review too?

[vinnie97]

American Gangster isn't above reproach...few movies are.

[scubasteve]

I found this movie to be fascinating and fun. I haven't seen the HD-DVD in fact, the last version I have seen was a BETA copy I recorded off T.V.

The plot and acting are excellent and the editing as noted in the review was excellent although I would disagree that this film had the quickest cuts of the era. I say it's "MIdnight Cowboy".

Steve

[Office Ed]

I'm surprised that the review got a low rating, I saw this many years ago, and i thought it was excellent.
And Faye Dunnaway was absolutely beautiful back in the day (i saw her on an episode of CSI last week, christ, it almost gave me nightmares, how much work has she had done? very sad)

[MNTWISTER]

"Studio Canal offers up an English DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 Surround track, but I wonder why they bothered."

Peter, I am very surprised and disappointed at that comment. All discs should have a lossless track no matter what the source material is. We should be praising studios for using lossless sound! Hats off to Studio Canal for doing one even if the source material isn't that great, at least we can hear what the master really sounds like uncompressed. Even a mono film will benefit from a lossless track.

To close, I thought this was a very good film.

[vinnie97]

Actually, it's really debatable how much a low quality master will benefit from lossless audio when the psychoacoustic principles behind lossy audio can create a transparent experience much more efficiently...but knowing your posting histories, this is something you and I will never see eye to eye on.