Three Days of the Condor at 50: Robert Redford’s definitive spy thriller

Robert Redford was famously cast in Captain America: The Winter Soldieras a nod to paranoid ‘70s thrillers, but it’s easy to dismiss this inclusion as another example of Marvel’s puddle-deep cultural referencing. Sure, it’s great to see Redford bring his smooth, unfussy professionalism into the MCU, but casting him isn’t exactly proof of Winter Soldier’s genre bona fides. (See also: filmmakers referring to What’s Up, Doc? as an influence on Ant-Man and the Wasp seemingly because they’re both set in San Francisco.) Yet the shorthand is also understandable — almost entirely because of Three Days of the Condor, more or less the only paranoid ‘70s thriller Redford actually made.